A curious afternoon that at one point promised something, but eventually delivered very little was all the wily Orient Express Racing Team required to stick at the task in hand, stay focussed and doggedly persistent to eventually extract some meaningful time-on-the-water.
Gallic grit on display, Quentin Delapierre and Kevin Peponnet just never gave up – a hallmark of their career to date and of the French team’s approach to the Louis Vuitton 37th America’s Cup. Good on them. After a long wait as the breeze banged around south to slight south-easterly and played chicken with the anemometer’s reading of 7 knots, eventually flight was secured, and the French got some oh-so-valuable manual flight time offshore. It may only have been a few short runs but at this end of the competition with the clock ticking, it must have felt like gold-dust.
Surprisingly, a new face appeared at the base today in the form of Cup legend and double-winner Glenn Ashby who was last seen on an America’s Cup boat, Te Rehutai to be precise, on the 17th March 2021, crossing the line to another famous victory. Now drafted in as an adviser to the French team, Glenn will be dipping in and out to share his huge technical knowledge with them in, as he says: “a sort of a helicopter view from the outside if you like looking inside the team so obviously it's spending time with the sailing team, working with them to try and help them learn a little bit about the AC75 and spend a little bit of time with the LEQ just talking about the physics and the sailability of how the boats work and what they’re likely to experience as they move forward so while still spending time with the sailing team, I guess there's other departments - design and management - that I can be involved with as well so it's really a global overview of the campaign as a whole.”
“First impression...they're all very, very, enthusiastic and very excited to move forward into the AC75 which is fantastic and for me I haven't been involved with the America’s Cup or with a team since the last race really of the last America's Cup so been living back in Australia and doing other projects if you like that have wheels and things like that, it's been nice to get back on the water again I certainly haven't really done much sailing at all over the last couple of years, except for a little bit of windsurfing...so for me it's a real pleasure to be here... it's a fairly small team with a relatively small budget so the learning curve’s really, really, steep but I think it's a fantastic opportunity for them to be a part of the show and I think hopefully their design team have done a nice job of designing a fast boat.”
Elsewhere, both Alinghi Red Bull Racing and INEOS Britannia attempted a sail but called it a day as the wind just faded into the early afternoon. The Swiss took the opportunity to let members of the team who wouldn’t normally get the chance to go onboard the AC75 spend some time on the boat as it bobbed around, and the Alinghi Red Bull Racing ‘family’ were up for a bit of fun putting their helmsmen Maxime Bachelin and Arnaud Psarofaghis in the cyclor pits and swapping everyone around. Team spirit is everything at Alinghi Red Bull Racing and they all had a smile on their faces despite the weather not playing ball.
Cyclor Théry Schir even commented: “We also saw some dolphins, so you know it was quite romantic out there!” On a more serious note, Théry also spoke about the new boat that the team are all eyeing and when asked if the cyclor performance will be different, commented: “I don't think it would be very different, I just think where we developed before with BoatZero is going to be very useful for BoatOne. You know you always want to develop your systems to make them as easy and to produce the less possible watt and to take out the maximum advantage of it so we will see how the boat reacts to any new concept or our own concept, so that's very exciting.”
An ex-Olympic road cyclist, Théry knows the demands that are going to be placed on him and the rest of the Power Group at Alinghi Red Bull Racing. It’s a task they’re looking forward to: “It is very close to what I was used to going to the Olympics on the track or in road cycling so it's really high performance on those boats and you need to prepare yourself for this, I mean the attitude, the training, and the fitness side of it, because it's really intense.”
For INEOS Britannia it too was a wait for the breeze before calling it a day which was a shame as they were looking to get their testing runs completed before letting the Athena Pathway sailors increase their hours on the water. Dylan Fletcher-Scott, helmsman summed it up saying: “We thought it would be light, but we thought it would be maybe a couple more knots than it was, but ultimately the breeze has been fantastic recently and all the teams have been getting good hours in and the thing what’s been nice is we've had that south-westerly, frustrating day but you know it comes with it in winter in Barcelona.”
Dylan has been spotted sailing his International Moth in Barcelona, and as the current reigning World Champion (still), he has been keeping his eye in whilst the team on-boat test after the battery fire on Athena curtailed their two-boat programme. Asked what he can relate between the two, he added: “I guess I’m doing a little bit less sailing now so just going out there and you do see some things and it's always useful to experience those conditions...the SIM’s always valuable, you know we're spending an increasing amount of time in there as we get closer to the big boat launch so yeah it's fantastic to have that tool our disposal.”
NYYC American Magic elected to stay shoreside today but are eyeing an improving weather picture for the rest of the week to resume their two-boat programme. (Magnus Wheatley)