A MEMORABLE ‘DIADA DE SANT JORDI’ IN BARCELONA

For Alinghi Red Bull Racing, the technique improvements are coming thick and fast with the team beginning to build confidence in their radically-designed platform. It’s early days but this young, hard-charging Swiss team have proved over the previous two years that they are the fastest learners with an eagerness to hit peak performance. That will come in time, but BoatOne looked a different boat today, standing on its foils in just 7-8 knots of breeze and using all the leverage of the windward cant arm as the breeze topped out at around 14 knots late on.

Early in the session, the call was made to go for the de-powered J3 initially – a brand new allocation – and before the breeze began its build, they were noticeably down on horsepower through the tacks and gybes. Unfazed, this was very much a great opportunity just to bed the systems and control in, concentrate on communication, work through the power delivery and for the Flight Controllers, getting used to dual controls of both ride height and sail trim.

One stand-out today in terms of the mode of ‘BoatOne’ was its tendency to go bow down both at lift-off and through the gybes. The aggressive chine is clearly seen working hard but to correct the pitch, the Flight Controllers seem to have to fly the boat relatively high with the consequence being the bustle run off to the stern noticeably higher than we see on the Kiwis or the Italians. Upwind the stern hunkers down again but there is considerable wave forms coming over the sculpted bow – will be interesting to see if technique changes or moding changes will be made to the boat in due course. For sure in a big sea-state, BoatOne could be interesting to watch to see what moding the sailors select.

Speaking afterwards, Bryan Mettraux, truly one of the quiet superstars of the Louis Vuitton 37^th America’s Cup and a mainstay of the Driving Group, spoke to the recon team, outlining the objectives, saying: “Our objective is still to learn the boat. It's quite different than BoatZero so we have a lot of things to learn, to understand, how the boat behaves and today we're pretty happy with the systems, with how the boat was working on the water, so it's a really positive...For sure we have been a bit downrange at the beginning of the sailing but then also on our side we improved quite a lot about the technique so playing with the heel, the cant, all the settings we have to achieve better stability and it was much better.”

Talking animatedly about how different the boat feels, Bryan added: “Yeah for sure, even as we have good experience already on an AC75, it's so different from BoatZero that we have to re-learn how to sail the boat, the feeling is also quite different onboard, it's really interesting...I think one of the biggest differences is the drag of the hull, today with this boat we can sail touching the water, it wasn’t the case with BoatZero so it's the biggest thing we have to play with, we can be a bit more comfortable with the pitch and learn how to use that, to touch the top of the waves...really interesting.”

Asked about performance and the data logging to target speeds, Bryan commented: “I think it's still early for us, for sure we’re looking at the target, the VPP to sail the boat as fast as possible but it's not the goal now to find the little details, we are more in the big picture and finding out how to sail the boat properly.”

A final word on the sail programme, with Brian commenting: “It's also part of the learning, today we had a new J3, so it was interesting to see that. It's come from all the tests we did on the AC40 this year and on the LEQ12 so it's really interesting to scale it up to the big boat and the mainsail also we saw that we have still a lot of a job on with the sails to make them nice.”

Sharing the Barceloneta waterway today was both Orient Express Racing Team sailing their AC40 in one-design mode and the daily sight of NYYC American Magic, two-boat racing down by the Port Olímpic. What we saw from the Americans was some outstandingly close combat once again with one finish defined by just a metre and some pre-start action that was noted for its intensity in the final lead-back to the line. (See the race reporting below).

Asked about how close the team are to defining their playbook in the pre-start, Team Coach Tom Burnham gave a solid answer, saying: “I think the pre-start playbook is always going to be evolving so we'll see. I think we've learned a lot over this last couple of months of doing racing practise so it's been really good to get a lot of repetitions for the guys and for us to see the patterns and how we might approach some racing in the AC75 and so we're going to have to take some time now to analyse it all after the sessions are finished and decide how we're thinking about approaching the racing when the time comes in the summer.”

With the AC40 programme coming to a close soon and the team’s emphasis shifting to the new, as yet unseen AC75 in their shed, Tom reflected on the importance of the two-boating, saying: “The AC40s have been amazing for these last couple of months, having two of them to be able to do all this race practise has been great and you know we can still continue with the race practise through the end of this session with the AC40s before we start sailing the AC75 so it's pretty nice to have two boats to be able to go racing and obviously once we shift to the AC75 we'll be on our own so it turns to a different focus at that point.”

For sure, the Americans seem to be ticking all the boxes at the moment and very much doing it their way in this campaign for the Louis Vuitton 37^th America’s Cup. The coming weeks will be defining moments for this thrilling challenger. (Magnus Wheatley)

On-Water Recon Report – Alinghi Red Bull Racing: Alinghi Red Bull Racing's racked up a valuable day of training aboard the Swiss team's new AC75 in Barcelona on choppy seas and in winds ranging from 7 to 15 knots.

The boat was rolled out of the hangar at 0930 to be rigged and launched by 1000. Dock out was at 1200 after which the M1-1 mainsail and J3-1 headsail were hoisted by 1220. Pre-sailing checks / setup took a further 50 minutes before the boat exited the harbour on a bow tow at 1300. After a 10-minute displacement tow offshore, the boat set off on its own a few minutes later and was soon airborne on starboard in 12 knots of breeze for a two-minute flight before a touchdown tack to port followed by a quick take off on a 15 minute flight. Seven more flights followed, each comprising some upwind and downwind sailing.

As the breeze built later in the day the manoeuvres and take offs became smoother as the J3 headsail came into its correct wind band. The final session was a long upwind from near Badalona back to the harbour with multiple foiling tacks. During the day upwind speeds were estimated to be in the low 30 knot range, with downwind speeds touching high thirties.

Time was called at 1615 with the boat back on the dock at 1700. Another day of sailing is scheduled for tomorrow Wednesday April 23.

On-Water Recon Report – NYYC American Magic: AC40-8 ‘Magic’ was craned in at 10:20 and AC40-5 'America' was craned in at 10:50 for dock-out at midday. Today Riley Gibbs was helming on port in Magic and Severin Gramm was trimming in the starboard pod, after recovering from a big hand injury. At 12.10 they hoisted mainsails: MC-4 for America and MC-2 for Magic, paired with a J1custom jib for America and a J1 one-design jib for Magic.

There was no wind after hoisting sails, so the team waited at the entrance of the harbour until 12:25 when a SE wind seemed to be blowing about a mile away to the North East. Chase Boats towed the AC40’s and at about 12:35 both boats started sailing. There was a nice swell coming from a 138 º direction and 4 to 7 knots TWD 100º. From here the sailing session progressed as follows:

Stint 1 (12:35 to 13:30): 4-7 knots TWD 100º@12:35. Both boats started sailing together sailing upwind on a very long starboard tack. After the first tack Magic lost the foiling and America kept sailing on her own. She continued sailing for two very long tacks more and after the last tack she bore-away into a downwind course and sailed to meet Magic, who was not foiling yet. When they met, both foiled together to the starting line, that was set again by the team in front Port Olímpic. When they arrived at the starting line, they started to perform some pre-start manoeuvres. We believe that they were also taking references about the size of the box set by the team. One recon observation was their light wind gybe technique that we saw on America: before entering the gybe, they were taking a bit of height, then canting a bit the leeward arm in and heeling the boat a bit to leeward at the moment of starting the gybe.

Stint 2 (13:30 to 14:40): 6-8 knots TWD 160º@13:30. Five pre-starts were done in this stint. In all of them Magic was into the box before America. In the first start Magic took the pin position and America started just windward of Magic. After two tacks they came back to the starting line. In the second start, it was America taking the pin and Magic started very close windward of America. They raced an upwind/downwind racecourse. Six tacks were completed upwind and four gybes downwind. In the upwind they were close to each other but in the downwind America managed to put some extra distance in between. Third start was won by America as Magic failed a manoeuvre and lost the foiling before staring. Exactly the opposite happened in start number four, won by Magic. In start number five Magic won the start, crossing the line on port with America just behind in her wind shadow, making her come off the foils. Wind shifted to the right and the upwind course was changed to 190º.

Stint 3 (14:40 to 16:30): 8-11 knots TWD 180º@14:45. Wind shifting until 8-13 knots TWD 210º@16:00. Both boats changed batteries, swapped jibs from J1 to J2 and had lunch so it wasn’t until 15:25 that they continued with the next start. Also, America seemed to have some trouble with the jib and had to drop it and hoist it again before the next start. Three pre-starts were completed in this stint. In all of them America was into the box before Magic. In the first, Magic won the pin, but America started very close to windward of Magic. The upwind mark was set at190º but as the wind shifted, the team set a virtual mark at a 210º course. They both sailed in an upwind battle of seven tacks, America took the upwind mark first and took a bit more of distance on the downwind. At the bottom mark rounding, she lost foiling slightly, allowing Magic to catch up. They continued for one lap more and in a great finish, America crossed the line just one meter ahead of Magic. They had a great battle. When finished, America needed again to drop and hoist the jib once more. In starts two and three, we saw very aggressive fights in the last 30 to 40 seconds sailing to the line. After start two, America had a poor tack, late dropping the windward arm, so the hull touched the water and lost the foiling. In start three, we saw an aggressive move from America to take the leeward position to Magic in the last second. A frenetic race continued with two upwind legs and one downwind leg completed, finishing with the last upwind leg at the entrance of the harbour. It was won by America.

Dock in was complete at 16:50.

As a summary Magic and America foiled for 160 minutes. They performed some speed tests, around 60 tacks and 47 gybes for each boat and completed 8 pre-starts and 3 upwind/downwind course races. Jose Piñana AC Recon