SHORT AND WET BUT WORTHWHILE
All credit to Alinghi Red Bull Racing who spied a tiny weather window in Barcelona just after midday and went for it despite heavily overcast conditions and persistent, driving rain that made the session a damp and tricky affair. They were rewarded with just one short upwind that got the boat flying, albeit briefly, and then it was a study in displacement sailing as the wind shut down before the team called it and towed home.
Whilst all the other teams elected for a ‘maintenance day,’ it really was a gamble on Mother Nature but the gains in terms of team process, co-ordination with the shore team and the on-water Chase Teams is not to be under-estimated. For all the glorious champagne conditions of recent weeks, this was harsh reality of an America’s Cup campaign – it’s not for the feint hearted or the sunshine brigade. These are the hard yards and often the teams take more from these days than they realise.
Bryan Mettraux, summed it up succinctly saying: “We were expecting more than what we had, we had like a short window, one hour of shifty breeze between 8 and 10 knots and yeah then it dropped pretty quickly, and we had a short day.” And asked what a day like today meant in terms of data aggregation, Bryan was upbeat saying: “Yeah I think the day was a good one for that, sometimes it’s frustrating to not achieve the take-off but it's part of the learning, we have to learn how to use the boat, find the best way to accelerate, today we could also play a bit with the waves so just trying to find the right set-up.”
Alinghi Red Bull Racing docked out with the big M1-1 (version 'B' skins as declared over the weekend) mainsail that they’ve been favouring recently and interestingly paired it with the J2-1 jib, the second biggest jib in the wardrobe. Asked why they didn’t break out the J1, when perhaps these were the conditions for it, Bryan responded: “I think we'll see in the future but it's always a tough question because you know that you need the maximum power to take-off, maximum area, but as soon as you fly it's too draggy, so it’s a difficult call.”
Some other changes include the removal of the windshields from the Trimmer and Flight Control positions in the forward pods (incidentally it sounds like the Swiss are electing to split these roles) as Bryan commented: “We removed the transparent windshield that we had in the past, it feels better now with a free view in front of me... On my side I was flying the boat today so didn’t have a lot of chance look outside the boat so it’s more the job of the sail trimmer and the helmsman.”
Asked about the new symmetric foil set-up following the weekend declaration of upgrades to both foils, Bryan responded: “It's nice now to have a symmetric boat and making the boat flight way easier than what we had in the past, and it's a good feeling.”
Great effort from Alinghi Red Bull Racing but just one of those days in Barcelona in early summer as the transition rolls through. Champagne sailing days ahead – that’s for sure. (Magnus Wheatley)
On-Water Recon Report – Alinghi Red Bull Racing: The Swiss Challenger for the Louis Vuitton 37thAmerica’s Cup rolled out their AC75 at 10:00. The boat was craned to the water at 10:25 and the team docked out at 12:00, as planned, after usual routine activities under the rain. The M1-1 was selected for the session, combined with the J2-1. Both sails were hoisted just before heading out of the port at 12:25.
The training started with a long upwind leg, sailing under an eight-knot easterly breeze, combined with a 0.8m swell. Nine tacks were performed. Two of them counted as fully-foiling, four as touch & go and the remaining as fully landed.
At 12:50 there was a ten-minute break in which the technicians got onboard to perform their routine checks. Unfortunately, at 13:00 once the team was ready to resume sailing, the wind had shut down and that was pretty much the end of the day.
The rest of the time was spent either on the tow going from one place to another looking for wind or sailing in displacement mode but without being even close to take-off.
Alinghi Red Bull Racing entered the port at 14:20, sails got lowered and the team docked at 14:38, indicating the end of a wet day. Sebastian Peri Brusa – Recon on Alinghi Red Bull Racing