America's Cup, talent shining in cloudy Barcelona

Emirates Team New Zealand came ashore after a long session that took them all around the Barcelona waterway with a lot of lessons learned and a real premium on trim, moding, accuracy of steering and flight control.

It was tough out there at times, especially early afternoon when the conditions got marginal for foiling or to be more specific, manoeuvring, with Andy Maloney and Blair Tuke trimming the forestay tension and jib like they were back in high-performance dinghies. Going through the waves, particularly from starboard to port, the trimmers were working hard to deliver the power whilst Nathan Outteridge and Pete Burling were sailing wide angles, scalloping to leeward for power before coming back on course as the foils ‘bit’ with the flow attachment. It was an endless task until the team went to greet the incoming southerly/south-easterly that was building offshore and trailed it all the way back into the Barceloneta racecourse area where they had ‘Te Rehutai’, the Cup winning AC75, on rails as they rifled through a series of pre-starts and laps.

Gybing downwind on the inshore racecourse area was something of a concern, perhaps with slightly too much respect being given to the lighter conditions with the resultant stern-first splashdowns being the effect of over-steering. This is a fast-learning team and they’ll be looking at those exits and poring over the data to improve. One feature that we see time and again with Emirates Team New Zealand is that Blair and Andy will dial the hull desperately close to the water both upwind and downwind almost regardless of the conditions. Watch this trend, it could be the DNA of AC75s being unlocked and will be much-copied around the America’s Cup village.

Andy Maloney, an alumnus of the talent-factory that is the famous Murrays Bay Sailing Club in New Zealand, gave his run down of the day saying: “Another awesome day of learning here in Barcelona. We had the breeze from sort of South-South-East and a big sea state from a bit more to the east so breeze around sort of 7 to 11 knots of wind and just a really good day for learning for us…Early on there was a bit more breeze offshore so we ended up heading offshore a little bit and then by the end of the day it filled nicely down on the racecourse area, so we got to do a few laps at the end.”

Andy, understandably, wouldn’t be drawn on the techniques that the team have been using so effectively in the lighter airs but did allude to the wave technique saying: “Just super dynamic out there with the waves, so just trimming around it.” Andy and Blair’s ability through those dynamic situations in the light is where the team have been really concentrating their efforts to create tangible gear-shifting momentum in high co-ordination with the helmsmen – fascinating to watch. Another good day on the water for Emirates Team New Zealand who are functioning well as a unit here in Barcelona all round from top to bottom.

Another team that are almost impossible to take your eyes off in Barcelona now is NYYC American Magic who brought Tom Slingsby into the two-boat training, sailing with alternate helm Lucas Calabrese on the moded ‘America’ with Andrew ‘Rookie’ Campbell and Riley Gibbs on trim. Meanwhile on ‘Magic’, the next generation sailing continued with the highly impressive duo of Severin Gramm (trim) and Harry Melges (helm) learning from Paul Goodison and Michael Menninger. The Americans are taking the Youth America’s Cup seriously and they’ve found gold-dust with their trio of sailors (Finn Rowe being the other) who have settled in super-well to the team and are acquitting themselves magnificently both off and on the water.

American Magic had the obligatory drones flying low in the sky today, trained relentlessly on the starboard wings of both boats when they managed to get flying and took back ashore a total of 1 hour and 42 minutes of flight data over a three-and-a-half-hour session. However, the one big talking point was a long starboard tack where both boats were flying on their one-design port foils and within 15 minutes, having started to leeward, ‘America’ was significantly ahead. This perhaps points to better systems controls on the much modified ‘America’ although the Slingsby/Calabrese axis might have a different take – whatever, it was impressive boat speed eked out over a relatively longer straight-line distance.

Talking about the two-boat session with Severin Gramm, we got youthful enthusiasm as well as a refreshing insight as he described the programme that he and the other American Magic Youth sailors are on: “Yep training for the upcoming Youth America’s Cup and also helping out on shore however I can, just learning as much as I possibly can every single day, the learning curve has been vertical, it's been awesome and yeah can't wait to keep learning.”

And describing the day, Severin dived into the reality of sailing in choppy conditions and lighter winds saying: “It was probably the waviest day that we've had, and in combination with lighter breeze it definitely provided a challenge both up and downwind…The hardest part is probably the take-offs, managing the heel with the waves coming across your beam, they’ll kind of roll you either a lot to leeward or a lot to windward so trying to have a consistent feel for take-off is the most challenging.”

In the early part of the session, the team’s AC40s were often in displacement mode waiting for the southerly to come through but for Severin on trim he gave a perfect dinghy sailor’s answer: “Yeah, that just added to the challenge but once you're up and foiling typically you lock in with the groove and it was more manageable…we experimented with a lot of different settings but eventually we landed on a combination that felt more stable for us but it was definitely more of a head out of the boat kind of day than most.”

NYYC American Magic are very much a team to keep your eye on in this competition. Many people’s pick to go deep, there’s talent to burn in this exciting sailing squad with an equal smattering of todays and tomorrow’s sailing superstars. A brilliant America’s Cup programme that’s really executing now.