SUNDOWNER IN NAPLES
Persistence and tenacity are just two of the key qualities that course through La Roche-Posay Racing Team, the challenger representing the Société Nautique de Saint Tropez for the Louis Vuitton 38th America’s Cup. Back in the previous cycle through to the competition in 2024, the French mad late finishes, often in the dark, something of a habit, desperate to get time on the water. Yesterday in Naples they did the same.
After a day of high technology rig tuning, featuring fibre optic measurement systems and load cells, the sailors and technicians were keen to get La Roche-Posay Racing’s Team’s AC75 – ‘B2’ – back on the water and back into sail testing. The Bay of Naples however, had other ideas with the mild autumn continuing, bringing soft winds across the Mediterranean on north-easterly thermals meaning that the team had to wait ashore, anxiously receiving weather updates from their meteorology team.
Finally at just before 3pm, lines were slipped and the hope of an evening breeze built amongst the sailors. Initially it was tough sailing on short runs off the beautiful district of Posilippo as the wind shifted to the south-west and only filled to gusts of 8 knots. Interestingly, the French opted for their smaller MN3-1 mainsail and just a J2-1 jib which is a combination we have seen Emirates Team New Zealand trial extensively at the lighter end of the range. Is this America’s Cup cycle all about reducing aero drag up afloft? That’s the big question.
If teams can perfect take-off and maintain flight with a smaller sail area, is that the nirvana that unlocks performance? Time will tell on that front, but when La Roche-Posay Racing Team clicked into a beautiful late afternoon almost drainage breeze along the shoreline, they rocketed along at speeds up to 41 knots as the sun settled in the east. Quentin Delapierre and Diego Botín were always fighting the light but it was a useful session, called as darkness settled and fatigue took hold.
Interesting observation in the Recon Report from Mathieu Cadei, a highly experienced sailor and yacht designer who noted: “Coming after two days of rig work built around load tension measurements on the cap shrouds, the presence aboard of the electronics engineer involved in that work would be consistent with checking, under sailing load, what had been set up or calibrated, possibly relating shroud loads to the fibre optic lines or other rig sensors. The jib choice may tie in with this. No J1 has been seen on any observed day, and the team has tended to choose the smaller of the plausible jibs, J3-3 in very light air on D19 and J4-3 on D18 as the breeze softened, with J2-1 and J3-3 taken today. This would be consistent with a commissioning approach, which the team may still be in after all, keeping sail and rig loads on the conservative side while the rig loads and systems are still being characterised, rather than pushing the boat to its full potential yet. “
Magnus Wheatley
