LUNA ROSSA REVEALS NEW TECH AS BRITISH AND SWISS TRAIN IN STUNNING BARCELONA

As a commissioning day, it was all about developing the feel for the new foil and checking the systems and controls. Flight looked easier to attain on port tack with the starboard foil immersed, as we would expect, but some assumed electronics issues caused the team to stop for almost half an hour to fix. However once in flight on the new foil, the boat just took off at pace and the wonderful in-built balance that the Italians have with this stunning design allowed the team to ride super-low, end-plating beautifully and really pushing the boat hard. Top speeds looked easily north of 40 knots and even at that pace, the stability of flight was rock solid.

The new foil itself is a sculpted beauty with thin, long-span, almost flat foils situated aft on a flattened bulb stretching to an extreme pointed nose. The interesting detailing is on the foil connection to the arm with an elongated section protruding forward, below which is a stepped arm, housing what appears to be two fences on the outside. So slender are the wings themselves that the trade-off to minimum weight sees more build into the foil arm – an area the designers call the ‘aero-bomb.’ Wing tips are upturned and for today’s first sailing session with the new foil, no add-on cameras could be seen.

With an asymmetric set-up to the foils, it was impressive to see how they mirrored ride height side to side with the legacy anhedral foil, built for Auckland conditions in 2021, hung from the port arm and in the top-end conditions it was all on for the Flight Controllers. On the new foil, the on-water recon team observed that the sailing team were running quite aggressive windward heel, perhaps to not put too much pressure on the foil on its first day in service – that will change.

Speaking afterwards, Umberto Molineris one of the key members of the Luna Rossa Flight Control and Trim teams spoke about the day saying: “Today was the first day on our new wing and difficult day for a commissioning day obviously the main goal of the day was to check the wing and the systems working so it's a bit tricky with these conditions with some big gusts of 25 knots...the wing is really good and then we decided to stop because of the big wind...it was a first commissioning day and it was more about testing the systems and I think we will go through all the different moding in the next days.”

Talking about the new mast Umberto animatedly added: “Yes a new shiny mast and today as a first day for the mast I think we loaded it quite well in this big breeze and I think so far we’re happy but let’s see all the checks in the next days.”

Meanwhile back in Barcelona, Alinghi Red Bull Racing and INEOS Britannia trained in amazing sea-breeze conditions with winds peaking at 20 knots and allowing both teams to unleash the monstrous power and performance of their respective platforms. For the Swiss, this was a big day and they capitalised on it, looking solid and steady in flight both upwind and downwind and starting to work in the crucial pre-sets in the upper wind range.

In a swell that was rising to approximately 1.5 metres, the Flight Controllers grappled with ride height, treading the fine line between staying above the waves and keeping the bustle immersed for end-plating. On balance there's still a slight bow-down tendency in flight but the sailors don't seem in the slightest concerned and on long stright-line legs they were pushing hard for VMG and target speeds.

Towards the end of the session, the team felt something on the rudder and speculated that they may have struck a piece of wood so sent a diver in to inspect before calling a day with a small ingress of water found in the hull and towed back to base after just over two and a half hours of super-dynamic training. Impressive to see the team beginning to push this platform hard now and plenty of confidence in the team about the overall design.

Speaking afterwards Nicolas Charbonnier, trimming from the port pod for Maxime Bachelin today, was buzzing from the day saying: “We had a beautiful day sailing in the sea breeze that picked up to 20 knots and everything went really well we had a really flat sea-state also, so it was perfect sailing day for us...We just had a minor issue on the boat and it was a bit difficult to change it on the water so we decided to pull it up and will give more time to the guys to change it tonight and get ready for sailing tomorrow...it's a little something we struck with the rudder, maybe a piece of wood so we just wanted to make sure the rudder was in a good shape and everything was alright.”

Talking about how the boat felt today, Nico added: “The boat felt really well balanced, it was the first day for sailing above 15 knots of breeze but everything was really under control and the boat was actually really nice to sail, we had lot of good feelings so it was a beautiful day for us...We are planning to sail tomorrow, it will probably be really good conditions again so we're looking forward to going on the water again to just push the boat as hard as possible and learn a lot.”

For INEOS Britannia it was the second day of commissioning the muscular and highly technical ‘RB3’ so understandably the byword was ‘caution’ for the day with flight only taken upwind as the team get used to everything onboard. The boat popped quickly in the waters off Badalona to the north of Barcelona and from there the team started to quite easily execute foiling tacks on the bigger span foils. 

One of the early observed tendencies of ‘RB3’ is to sail quite bow down and for the Flight Controllers it’s a case of building in the pre-sets for all the various conditions in order to maintain optimal flight. The on-water recon team noted that at times they looked a little unstable when up on the foils and were grappling with ride height to correct the issues onboard. At the end of the session with sails down the team played with ride height and take-offs under tow on the way back to the base just after 1pm.

Dylan Fletcher-Scott and Ben Ainslie were charged with helming duties today and for Dylan it was a whole new experience as he reflected: “It's my first time sailing the AC75, it's fantastic and RB3 really is quite a fun boat to sail so it's  got some similarities to the simulator, it's been a great tool for us, so yeah fantastic to get out there and experience what they can achieve...Certainly there’s some limits that we've got, and we will slowly open those up as everything looks alright, we've got to be careful with it, it’s our race yacht, so all in all good so far.”

On one particular reach, the recon team observed that RB3 was easily into the 40 knot + bracket of boatspeed and Dylan was impressed with the performance saying: “It was fantastic to open it up a little bit and just tick through the commissioning list so yeah she was going alright and certainly feels like there's lots of performance there and we are looking forward to extrapolate that over the next few months.”

Busy days ahead for all the teams now as the clock ticks away relentlessly. The race for the Louis Vuitton 37^thAmerica’s Cup is well and truly on. (Magnus Wheatley)

On-Water Recon Report – Luna Rossa Prada Pirelli: LRPP team rolled out their B3 AC75 at 11:00, preceded by their new mast MT03. While stepping it, the team ran some load checks employing the usual RAM cylinder with one cyclor generating power to trim the jib cunningham. Another update was the new starboard foil wing: very flat spline form, slender pointy bulb, one flap along total span including winglets, spray fences on arm stock and a larger volume on arm thinning towards the trailing edge. On the dock, the team run through the usual checks before docking out 13:55. The forecast was upper range, 15-17 knots with gusts up to 23 knots from 305° closer by the harbour. The team then towed B3 for a while downwind at speeds of 25kn varying starboard cant angles in the choppy sea state further offshore. Then the mainsail M1-7, with a newly added window, was hoisted and paired to the legacy J4 jib. Once all set, a self-take-off was observed on starboard tack before quickly tacking to port, slightly unbalanced, for a first test of the new wing.

Compared to when foiling on the legacy appendage, B3 looked more heeled to windward, and bow down pitched loading the piercing foil while end-plating the hull. Considering the upper limit pressure and the significant chop it was challenging to keep up with B3, which seemed to reach speeds of 42-45 knots upwind. As the yacht suddenly decelerated, perhaps some comms issues were encountered as new helmets were passed onboard to the afterguard. At 15:05 the second stint began on port tack by self-take-off leaning to windward and easily finding stability on the foils.

Then B3 tacked and bore away for a longer straight-line downwind run. As the recon team caught up with B3, an unsuccessful gybe exiting on the new wing was observed ending up off the foils and back on the towline for electronic & hydraulic shore crew checks.

After this break, B3 performed another first easy looking self-take-off on port tack with 15-16 knots of boat speed at 80°. The yacht bore-away and sailed downwind where lower ride heights and more stability in the chop were noticed compared to foiling on the older wing. In terms of boat speed, B3 again easily outrun the recon chase boat suggesting speeds above 43kn.

As the yacht trimmed up on two boards, another impressive upwind straight-line run was observed while occasionally heeling to windward on the gusts depowering main. At 16:10, the yachts gradually decelerated to lower sails and the team docked at 17:25. Michele Melis AC Recon

On-Water Recon Report - INEOS Britannia: INEOS Britannia docked out today at 9:45, hoisted the mainsail M2-1 and towed RB3 to the same spot in front of Badalona harbour, like in previous sailing session. There they hoisted J2-1 jib. Wind was blowing in about 5-7 knots TWD 180º @ 10:30 and there was a symmetric swell to the wind of about 1 to 1.5m round and smooth. They foiled for a total of 7 tacks (14 miles). On the first tack, they were barely foiling and spent some minutes checking systems before they began to foil. After that, they continued sailing in a semi-foiling mode until they tacked. They sailed with the jib quite open and hardly pumped the mainsail to achieve take-off.

On the next two tacks, the boat appeared somewhat unstable while flying. They experimented with different heights, and the keel was not consistently parallel to the sea surface, showing a tendency for the bow to dip towards the water. Also, the foil from leeward was sometimes touching the sea surface. It felt like they were maybe just trying to feel the controls and the boat reactions as it seemed they were not sailing as fast as they could. They stopped and apparently, they just modified the angle from the sheet attached to the jib clew. The wind also increased to a solid 6 to 9 knots TWD 180º @ 12:00. From here they started sailing faster, stable, and cleaner (hull not touching much the water) and even for the first time they went for some seconds into reaching where immediately we saw speeds of solid 40+knots, but they quickly come back to the upwind course. From the 7 tacks done today 2 were in displacement mode, 3 touch and go and 2 fully foiling.

No downwind tests were done, and the sailing session was called early as they dropped sails at 13:00. Before getting back into the base they performed some take-off tests in towing mode at different speeds and accelerations. Dock in was done at 14:10.

On-Water Recon Report – Alinghi Red Bull Racing: ARBR rolled out their AC75 at 09:25 and craned it to the water at 10:02. The team docked out at 12:00 as planned, after usual hydraulic and electronic tests, and re-tying the spreader ends to the shrouds.

The same mainsail as two days ago was selected for today’s session, combined with the new J4-1 that was officially declared yesterday and used last Wednesday for the first time. In addition, new versions of both foil wings were declared, indicating that probably there were “hands-on” over the wings during the day-off.

When talking about the conditions, stable medium-strong winds from the SSW prevailed during today´s session, building in intensity through the day reaching up to 20 knots, providing an interesting training field. This is the first time the Swiss have seen winds over 15 knots of intensity onboard their new AC75. At 12:35 the team exited the harbour on the tow, with both sails already hoisted.

The training consisted of mostly sailing on a straight line, performing long upwind-downwind legs, pushing for maximum VMG. This combined with a few tacks and gybes per leg, respectively. After the first down-up, at 13:15 the team stopped and lowered the J4-1 to adjust something on the jib halyard. Then it got re-hoisted, and the training continued.

The observations from Wednesday (pitch angle bow down, leeward wing tip out of the water surface almost all the time, and the considerable mast pre-bend), were sustained during the session.  On top of that, in these stronger wind conditions the boat seemed much more stable and reliable than the other day, especially when manoeuvring, achieving fully foiling tacks on most of the occasions and a better gybing performance. Overall speaking, a pretty solid performance being just their 10th day with this new boat.

After a short break, at 13:55 the training continued with a new upwind, until the AC75 apparently hit a floating o semi-submerged object with the rudder that called the attention of the sailors who decided to stop for precaution. Immediately after, the diver jumped into the water to check the rudder underneath, while two team members opened the aft hatch to inspect for potential damage. Finally on the interview, the port trimmer informed us that small amounts of water were found inside the hatch.

At that moment the team proceeded to lower both sails and head back to the base to assess the situation, on the tow, foiling. Once back ashore, the boat was craned out and no damage was identified from the outside.

The team plans to train tomorrow, indicating that nothing serious was found. Sebastian Peri Brusa – Recon on Alinghi Red Bull Racing