America's Cup: every second counts for Ineos Britannia

It was a dull start to what turned out to be a highly productive data gathering day for Ineos Britannia with leaden, dull skies greeting the ever-cheery early morning shore team who are doing wonders with keeping T6 operational and the sailors firmly in their drysuits and on the water.

These are valuable times for the British who appear to be taking such logical steps forwards safe in the knowledge that data is accurate and meaningful as it feeds back through to the Mission Control centre in Brackley – home of Mercedes Applied Science - via the onshore facility in Palma. There’s a quiet confidence around the team, the sailors feel more than happy and there’s a healthily relaxed air shoreside with all the team members knowing the demands that are placed on them and the professionalism required.

On the water, the days keep getting better as an inherent familiarity builds into the sailing programme with ease of flight, ease of foil-to-foil manoeuvres and the ability to play with cant and foil trim regardless of the conditions. The ease with which T6 takes-off has to be a huge tick in the overall design process and the ability of the team, almost straight out of the box to be able to induce windward heel with rapid, sharp sail trim is all credit to the work that’s been undertaken in the design and engineering offices. Today was another day for big data with the team opting again to just keep the new cross-over J2 jib flying, which in transitional 8-12 knot conditions looks the perfect balance between inducing fast flight to get up on the foils, whilst lessening the drag that the headsail incurs with a fine entry top third, marginally but crucially, reducing sail area.

Asked if the boat was up at 100% operational capacity now after several days of near perfect sailing time, Giles Scott was fairly candid when he said: “It's getting closer. We’ve still got some reasonably big-ticket items that we know we've got to iron out and will be looking to do that over the over the coming weeks. It's a bit of a balancing act getting good time on the water collecting that key information that the design team need for decisions for RB3 (Race Boat Three) so that's really the juggling act we're playing at the moment.”

As with all America’s Cup campaigns, that “juggling” between time in the shed and time on the water is an unequal struggle where compromise has to prevail, and it was hydraulic leak down below, thought to be around or related to the jib track area that curtailed the session today. Giles was pretty relaxed about the issue saying: “The jib car was fine today but unfortunately we did stop a little bit little bit early because we had a bit of an oil leak downstairs, nothing major, but enough for us to head for home unfortunately.”

But looking forward to “RB3” – the one-build AC75 for INEOS Britannia, the anticipation was clear in the eyes of the double Olympic Gold medallist when asked about what speeds we might see in Barcelona as he said: “It’s going to be interesting to see because I think a lot of it will depend on where teams decide to nail promptly their foil design so I mean the boats are certainly going to be quick and they're going to be a lot quicker around the course that's for sure. Top speeds, well, watch this space.”

We certainly will Giles, we certainly will.