Perfect symmetry on an eventful day in Barcelona for American Magic

An enormous star-spangled banner was flying from the NYYC American Magic base today after the team launched their two AC40s into what looked like being a light and tricky day but built into something quite spectacular as the Mediterranean clouds rolled in bringing some puffy pulses and an increasing sea state.

It’s a nice touch that many of the teams have adopted in flying their national colours from the cranes that dot around the Port Vell when they’re out sailing and as an aside, the Emirates Team New Zealand base today sported the most enormous Bandera de Barcelona, the municipal flag of Barcelona, as they hosted dignitaries and supporters at the base this evening.

But out on the water, and throughout the afternoon, NYYC American Magic had the pedal to the metal for a brilliant two-boat training session noted for the precision of the training. This wasn’t just two boats sailing alongside, the team were into full height mode with their two modified AC40s both featuring the updated silver starboard anhedral foils that are they really testing for leeway prevention. The signature bow-down windward heel mode upwind was much in evidence with both boats pitched and rocked almost in unison with Tom Slingsby and Harry Melges IV on ‘Magic’ and Paul Goodison and Lucas Calabrese driving super hard on ‘America.’

On balance, and in an echo of yesterday’s session, ‘America’ does look to have the edge, with an ability to claw up from a lee position onto ‘Magic’s’ line more often than not. Systems control could well be the clue here, even with the crew rotation today, as ‘America’ is much modified in that department and it’s an area that American Magic have concentrated on even as far back as the early sailings of ‘Patriot’ their AC75, earlier this year in Pensacola. Experience is coursing through this team borne from a tough AC36 and it’s very interesting to see how they are developing and where. For sure, with senior sailmakers in the team, the aero packages will be top drawer and although we’ve only seen glimpses of innovation, it’s still early days in that department but the foil programme looks impressive.

The headline grabber today will be a dramatic capsize caught to perfection by America’s Cup photographer of note Paul Todd who captured ‘Magic’ with Paul Goodison and Harry Melges IV on the wheels getting high on a bear-away and the rudder cruelly ventilating on a rogue swell that tipped the team head-first into a pitchpole and the resultant capsize. It was right at the end of the session with batteries running low and thankfully minimal damage done but it just shows that if you push the AC40 too high, it bites. And it bites hard. Lessons learned all round.

After sailing we were treated to a fabulous interview with America’s undoubted coming sailing star of tomorrow in Harry Melges IV, grandson of the late but hugely respected Buddy Melges himself a winner of the America’s Cup as well as Gold and Bronze in the Olympic Games. To see Harry sailing well would have made his grandfather proud but equally how he, and his fellow Youth sailors hold themselves in the pressure cooker of the America’s Cup is a great credit to them as individuals. Talking about the day, Harry said: “Yeah, it was an awesome day for us out there, just like most days of Barcelona it started out quite light probably about six or seven knots and then it picked up pretty quickly by 2-3pm and we had gusts of 18 knots. We kept sailing and yeah really good day…there's nothing that quite compares to sailing an AC40 and being part of a Cup team, but I did a lot of Moth sailing and sailed skiffs growing up and that definitely helps me quite a bit with sail shapes and stuff like that look quite natural but some of the foiling attributes to this boat are definitely different.”

Talking about the capsize, Harry nailed it as he said: “We haven't quite de-briefed it yet but my gut feeling is we were maybe flying a bit too high and potentially the mainsheet didn't get eased enough and we started to heel to leeward during the bear away and the rudder came out of the water and after that we pitch poled very hard and capsized…there were no warnings on the wheel other than visual warnings. You know that when you start to heel to leeward and you feel like you're really high in the air, you should expect that something’s going to happen.”

On the water the Americans were joined by the INEOS Britannia AC40 who crossed their area and looked very neat and tidy onboard Athena which will very shortly be going into two-boat action with their pure LEQ12 ‘T6’ next week. As is the recon protocol now, when the teams are sailing their pure AC40s in One Design mode, as we have seen with Luna Rossa Prada Pirelli, there is no recon but as soon as the teams’ one-off LEQ12s are back in action, there will be full recon analysis.

 Across the session the tale of the tape showed a 1hour 26 minute foiling time for ‘Magic’ and  1hour 37 minutes for ‘America’ with a relatively small number of tacks and gybes (17 across 9 tacks all foiling and 8 gybes all foiling). A thoroughly productive day for the American team who are riding high – sometimes too high (!) – but really making progress.

One other event of note in Barcelona today was the arrival of Alinghi Red Bull Racing’s AC75 ‘BoatZero’ at their new, and rather fabulous, base that is situated right next to the Mare Magnum shopping centre on the Port Vell, next door to INEOS Britannia and the America’s Cup Official Exhibition Centre that will be opening shortly. The author joined the Chase Boat for the ride down from the mouth of the Port Vell harbour where the Swiss have been housed in their temporary base since August 2022. Big day for Alinghi Red Bull Racing whose new base is an absolute hive of activity and will be fully operational very soon with the team eyeing Monday for their next session.