THE SEARCH FOR PERFECTION IN GLAMOUR CONDITIONS

Alinghi Red Bull Racing, now in their tenth day of training continue to look better and better with a rock stable platform that begs the question: are these the optimal conditions for this design? Hard to bet against, the Swiss put on a mightily assured performance, attaining flight so rapidly that blink and you miss it.

The bustle works beautifully to attain the flight and then it’s all down to the Flight Control team to keep driving the ride height low and fast. With the big M1 mainsail, BoatOne looks a different boat – extremely balanced despite running a legacy jib to save on the sail allowance. Yes, we’re into that game now – expect to see plenty more ‘old’ sails coming out for all the teams in training as they preserve their best for the Louis Vuitton Cup in just four months’ time.

Long runs initially to build in the data and check all the systems, was then followed by some dynamic laps and the big take-away is just how smooth the foil and rudder profiles look through the water, especially when viewed from behind. Much reduced wing wash upwind is seen and all credit to the designers for getting this right, straight out of the box. Gybe angles downwind looked much tighter than we’ve seen before and some smart roundings of the laid buoys will be giving this young, hard-driving team an awful lot of confidence.

Arnaud Psarofaghis, very much the affable figurehead for the team spoke about the day and the M1 mainsail profile, saying: “Great sailing conditions, it's nice to start the day and the week like this between 8 and 10 knots, we did everything we wanted, and the boat was perfect. The guys did a really good job onboard and on the shore team as well...Today was the M1 that we took out again with conditions slightly lighter than last week, and we wanted to do some crossover with the sails, the boat was pretty nice as well, we did learn a bit more than the first sailing days that we had with the boat so all in all the boat was pretty locked in and we could get the numbers we wanted, which was good.”

Speaking about the boat that has exercised much opinion, Arnaud appears more than happy, saying: “The boat is going really nicely. We try to gain every knot every day and we try a lot of things with the designer and the sailing team just to get more stable and average speeds as high as possible.”

Those average speeds are coming fast and this was an assured performance for Alinghi Red Bull Racing who are totally focussed now on wringing every ounce of performance out of their design and systems. Fascinating to watch. They just keep getting better.

For INEOS Britannia it was a perfect Barcelona day to get through the commissioning check-list and for sure there’s a beautiful air of optimism around the British camp as they gradually begin to wind-up the boat to the point where they can push it. Understandably the team are taking it cautiously but every day on the water it just feels like the brakes are coming off and the enormous potential of this hyper-design is beginning to be unleashed.

The team unveiled a new rudder today with a larger elevator area and the recon team noted a slightly higher ride height than we’ve seen from the British before but still with their customary rock-solid stability. Since launch, this boat has been a model of stability, and it will be fascinating to see how she goes in a breeze. Plenty of straight-lines today and some interesting tacking technique, similar to what we’ve seen with the Kiwis and Italians coming through from the simulator to the water. Gybes were hit and miss, still plenty of co-ordination to work on there.

An unfortunate ding with a UFO curtailed the day right at the end as they were heading back to harbour and the call was made to drop sails and tow back in displacement. Leigh McMillan, Flight Controller sitting in the aft pods spoke about the minor incident saying:  “We actually hit something in the water so we had a big kind of spike on the rudder, we were actually on our way back towards the harbour anyway at that point so we just wanted to be extra careful that everything was okay, but it looks like everything was fine we probably could have foiled in anyway but yeah we're just going to check everything, we definitely hit something on one side of the elevators, there's a lot of debris out there so we spend a lot of time steering around it to avoid it at the moment but yeah I think everything is fine for sailing tomorrow.”

However, the positives were there for all to see as Leigh summed up the day saying: “Glamour conditions out there today, really lovely and the main focus is still to sign off the final commissioning bits, obviously we have a little bit more freedom now and we’re kind of putting in some more manoeuvres and stuff than we have been previously but still working up to get absolutely everything signed off on the boat and chuck in a few little tests as well but it was a great day...Everything is working pretty nicely, there's still a few little fine tunings to be done and tweaks, there’s always learning to be done on that front to make us more accurate with how we trim and fly the boat but it's coming together really quickly.”

And there’s plenty more to come from INEOS Britannia, as Leigh explained: “The boat just kind of feels like it wants to go which is nice, we’re getting up on the foils really quickly and we're still not up to absolutely max on all of our trims and stuff so we're still building up to those, but the sails are looking really nice as well so there's lots of positives all round.” The team will sail again on Wednesday.

Over in Cagliari, it was a wait for the wind at the start of the session, but it was well worth it for Luna Rossa Prada Pirelli who were in full manoeuvre test mode today, loading up their asymmetric foil set-up and proving beyond any doubt that the new, long-span foil on the starboard side is a game-changer. When in flight on port tack with the new foil immersed there were some frightening top speeds being hit and a bear-away caught on camera looked stratospheric on the speed dial. Great sailing but for sure the sailors will be desperate to get rid of the port anhedral and onto an AC37 design as quick as possible.

Speaking afterwards, Luca Kirwan, the son of New Zealand rugby legend Sir John Kirwan and now one of the dynamic cyclors on the Luna Rossa Prada Pirelli roster, commented on the day saying: “I think initially it was a bit frustrating not much wind coming in, so it was a bit of standby but once we got moving it was pretty productive, I thought. We had to stop again a couple of times for a couple of maintenance checks but everything was all good so it was good when we're up foiling in I think generally everyone was quite happy so yeah it was good.”

It feels like summer all across the Mediterranean at the moment and the sailors are absolutely revelling in the new tech, new techniques and new performance profiles of these awesome, era defining AC75s that are coming onstream now. The next four months is too good to miss. Stay tuned. (Magnus Wheatley)

On-Water Recon Report – Alinghi Red Bull Racing: The Swiss Challenger rolled out their AC75 at 10:00 and craned it to the water at 10:30. The team docked out at 12:00 as planned, after usual routine activities. The M1-1 mainsail used during most of the month of April, which has a wider top section, among other aspects, was selected for today´s session. Stable medium-light winds prevailed from the SSW, combined with flat-water conditions. The training started at 12:40 with a double upwind-downwind warm up. By the end of it, a slight increase on the wind strength demanded a head sail change, with the J3-1 coming to replace the J2-1.

At 13:15 a four-lap upwind-downwind was carried out, without using the marks. When comparing to one of the days last week under similar wind conditions and using the same J3-1, today the boat seemed a lot more stable and reliable with this M1-1, especially during the manoeuvrers when sailing at low speeds.

At 13:40 there was a ten-minute break in which the J3-1 was replaced by the J3-3L which has a much narrower top and middle sections. Then a long upwind leg was performed combined with a three take-offs and accelerations.

At 14:20 Alinghi Red Bull Racing headed in reaching course towards the port entrance and stopped. Cyclors rotated, while the main got unlocked and lowered just a few meters from the top, to work on the mainsheet hydraulic system. At the same time, one of the chase boats helped to keep the boat head-to-wind. Once sorted, at 14:45 the training continued, and Alinghi Red Bull Racing headed towards the racecourse area to execute some laps.

To end the session, a non-stop four-lap upwind downwind was executed, around a course with leeward gates and only a top mark, which the team altered with port and starboard mark roundings. All manoeuvrers except one tack were fully foiling, with neat mark roundings and accurate layline estimations. At 15:20 there was a ten-minute debrief, and then the team proceeded to lower both sails before heading back to the base on the tow. The boat entered the harbour on the tow with no sails and docked at 16:00. Half an hour later, it got craned out of the water.

Another productive day on the water for Alinghi Red Bull Racing that seems in the right path, improving continuously day after day. Sebastian Peri Brusa – Recon on Alinghi Red Bull Racing

On-Water Recon Report – INEOS Britannia: The British rolled out RB3 at 9:15 today with a different rudder and elevator compared to previous days. The outline from this rudder was straight and without steps and the surface area from the elevator was bigger and with a flatter profile compared to the previous one. Crane in was done at 9:50 and after some regular checks on the systems and mast rotation verifications, dock-out was set at 12:00. RB3 was towed by the chase boat out from the harbour to a location a bit SE of the Port Olímpic. They hoisted the MN2-1 mainsail, paired with a J3 jib.

A wind of about 10-12 knots TWD 180 @ 12:30 was blowing when the sails were hoisted. The sea state was flatter to the previous days sailed. The sailing session consisted in a summary of 5 upwinds and 4 downwinds where 14 tacks and 14 gybes were seen. We saw flat tacks, and some of them were started with a high ride height and the mainsheet track progressively getting closed to windward as the boat was starting to luff for the tack (this happened more on starboard than on port tacks). At the exit of the tack, they were bearing-away a little bit to build speed so they could point higher after that. Half of the tacks done today were fully foiling and the other half touch & go’s.

On the gybes, those completed from port to starboard side were more successful than the ones done from starboard to port side. Generally, INEOS Britannia were entering the gybe releasing the mainsheet track to leeward and after gybing they kept the mast track to windward on the new gybe. After lifting the windward arm, they were moving the mainsail track progressively to the centre or even a bit leeward to the centre. On a few gybes they tried to go quite high at the exit of the manoeuvre. The exit angle from the successful gybes was perfect to hold on the downwind course in a straight line. Two of the gybes today were touchdowns, and the rest of them half fully foiling and half touchdown.

When sailing on a straight line (upwind or downwind) INEOS Britannia was generally sailing with more ride height and stability than the previous days, due to the sea being flatter, and the elevator surface slightly bigger. Their height was quite stable most of the times, although we could see them testing different sailing heights.

They repeated the exercise of the previous sailing session of decelerating the boat to limit foiling speed and accelerating again while sailing upwind. According to port side trimmer Leigh McMillan, who was interviewed after the sailing session, the goal for that kind of testing was to “look at the performance of the boat and the foils at their slowest speeds and gathering lots of data for all the designers to correlate and validate the models and make sure we are where we expected to be."

Cyclors were replaced at 14:45, that is 90 minutes after they started sailing. On the way back to the harbour they collided with something that made the rudder ‘spike’ so they decided to drop the sails and tow the boat back to port to avoid any other collision and have a check of the rudder at the base. Dock in was done at 16:45. Jose Luis Piñana – AC Recon

On-Water Recon Report – Luna Rossa Prada Pirelli: The Italians rolled out the B3 AC75 at 10:30, proceeded with mast and cables stepping procedure and crane in. The team docked out at 12:55 and awaited about an hour for the Maestrale breeze to fill in. The forecast included at first 10-12kn from 335° with offset 0.5m swell from 165°. The mainsail M1-7 was paired to the J3-7.

The first two foiling runs ended up being short on each tack as the team seemed to be facing some helmet comms issues while technicians focussed on the jib sheeting system. At 14:55, B3 took on starboard tack and sailed a reach before bearing away for a longer straight-line run with occasional starboard arm drops before gybing and trimming back up. Then, the team seemed to test some upwind modes on the new wing sailing occasionally high and slow with slightly over-sheeted main traveller. Each time when the yacht fell to displacement below 18-19kn, it bore away to build again inducing camber with spanner and coming up close hauled again.

As the yacht decelerated after approx. 20 minutes, technicians worked on the rudder gantry. In the next 25 minutes of sailing, the yacht started on starboard tack, one time by self-take-off and the other by tow-to-fly. As it bore away it executed a number of gybes in lighter air further offshore before trimming back up on port tack and repeating this routine again. Ride heights were driven at minimum for end-plating upwind while higher heights were occasionally sailed downwind.

The swell, slightly longer compared to previous day, seemed to not decrease significantly the sailing stability on starboard tack. At 16:15 the pressure had suddenly decreased, and the J3-7 was lowered to increase sail area. A shorter while later, the pressure had shown up again and the team opted for the J2-7. Once hoisted, the breeze had already increased to 13-15kn, with gusts up 17kn, perhaps more in range for the J3-7 instead of J2-7. During this break, one helm, one trimmer and both aft pods cyclors were then rotated after 45 minutes foiling.

In the last 25 minutes of foiling, upwind VMGs speeds were recorded between 37-39 knots on port tack according to the recon chase boat GPS while the platform appeared occasionally heeled to leeward. Downwind speeds can be assumed to be above 43 knots as quite challenging to keep up with the yacht. Luna Rossa called it a day after approx. 70 minutes of foiling; 13 tacks and 10 gybes were executed mostly foil to foil. Michele Melis AC Recon.