America's Cup, six teams operational in high summer

And then there were six…The Orient Express Racing Team have made a very welcome sight as the sixth team to become operational in Barcelona out of their base at the western end of the Port Vell harbour as the team’s beautiful new AC40 with one of the best colour schemes was launched and tow-tested with a target of first official sailing today. Unfortunately for the French, a high summer weather pattern has seen Barcelona trapped between the Levante and the Garbi winds, that shut down the America’s Cup racecourse area, as the mercury has risen considerably with temperatures touching the high 30’s in parts today.

Sensibly, and no doubt with a long check-list, the French stayed ashore – better conditions are forecast for a few days’ time whilst Emirates Team New Zealand docked out ‘Te Rehutai’ at midday desperate to get as much light airs training in as possible. NYYC American Magic also made the call to go out, slightly later than the Kiwis and were met by a glass-out. The Kiwis towed around in vain, looking for any slight patches to get their AC75 up on the foils, towing out towards the TP52 fleet that were resolutely underneath their boom canopies sheltering from the sun, and then back into shore as a feint hope of something building along the coastline raised hopes. It wasn’t to be and by 2pm, the call was made to tow back to shore.

Speaking afterwards, Ray Davies gave his usual terrific interview to the recon team saying: “We were hoping to see some really light bottom end conditions and our forecast had enough wind for us to go sailing so we went out there and gave it a go, had our sails up but the most breeze we saw all day was 4.7 knots so not enough for us today unfortunately so that was a shame, that's the first day we've lost so far up to now and yeah it's really interesting to learn on days like today even when our forecasts say one thing and reality is not quite the same, that's learning for us.”

Asked what tools the team are using to get accurate wind predictions, Ray explained the system that all the teams have signed up to, saying: “We use some of the local forecasts up here, we have observations along the coast, the America's Cup teams have all joined into a joint weather programme. Between us all we have set up six weather stations along the coast and we can all access that data via Predict Wind and so that is very useful to see how the wind is developing in real time. And then obviously we use various models to predict what's going to happen in the future and it's a very dynamic region along the coast here and whether the thermal winds happen or the Levante breeze blows. So we're learning a lot about the variance between when is a sea breeze going to develop, like yesterday was a beautiful breeze but the forecast was similar where there wasn’t much breeze forecast so we need to try and understand when is it going to be good, when is it not going to happen.”

Talking about the Kiwi’s relentless dedication to honing their light air techniques, the data they’re extracting and the learning’s they’re taking, Ray said: “You have to decide where your priorities are, what you're trying to test, and we really want to try and get some light air sailing in and so we're pushing hard to sail in the light winds at the moment, so then you have to accept some days it's not going to work out. If we only wanted to sail in 10 knots of wind, for sure, we wouldn't have gone sailing today so that's the risk you have to take and the investment you have to take. Sometimes you don't quite get enough breeze, so the best thing is to be flexible and get the latest forecast and then decide if you leave the dock or not …we're obviously going to see light winds in Barcelona so we have to get used to sailing at the bottom end conditions because we're expecting to have a number of days when it is around six and a half to seven knots of wind.”

Whilst Emirates Team New Zealand fast-towed home, NYYC American Magic’s two AC40s were on the water in glassy conditions just outside the Port Vell and the team took the opportunity to do some fitting exercises with new sails that they’ve just taken delivery of. Onboard ‘Magic’ the team could be seen raising and lowering a J1 and J2 jib and Riley Gibbs commented: “The boats are extremely complex, so any time on the water you're validating systems and whatnot and just checking that all things are ready to go for the next day on the water. Unfortunately, we didn't have the breeze today but we can still, you know, make a pretty valuable day out of it…we just took the day to kind of check the sail geometry, we've got some new sails that we've taken delivery of so just validating that they all fit, and you know we wanted to check strop lengths…just making sure we're ready for the next day and we're not wasting our time the next day we get on the water.”

Over in Cagliari, it was a very different story for Luna Rossa Prada Pirelli who were enjoying a full range of conditions on flat water and looking sensational throughout in their LEQ12. When the breeze got up, Francesco Bruni, Jimmy Spithill and Ruggero Tita showed unbelievable accuracy in their steering whilst the stalwart cohort of Flight Controllers Umberto Molineris, Vittorio Bissaro and Andrea Tesei showed just why they are rated so highly in America’s Cup circles with desperately low flight upwind, flat and controlled power downwind and an ultimately stable platform throughout the near four-hour session.

Trim of the mainsail was just beautiful with rapid alterations on the traveller and mainsheet whilst there’s still a suspicion of some linkage at times upwind between the main sail and jib. Certainly, there was a very high mode upwind, caught from behind on camera with the main up the track and the jib very bladed as we’ve seen on Emirates Team New Zealand in the AC75 and at times with NYYC American Magic in their LEQ12 ‘America.’ What the high mode seems to achieve is vastly reduced leeway but perhaps a speed deficiency – correct that final part and it’s a gold-dust mode, particularly on a squeeze up to the windward mark. Alinghi Red Bull Racing have been caught on camera doing precisely that in the AC40 and it could be one of the defining elements of the final third of windward legs come the real racing. Laylines be damned.

Speaking afterwards Francesco Bruni gave some interesting pointers about the team’s testing in Cagliari. Talking about the auto-trim and going to pre-sets, Francesco said: “I think you can make some gains, but the automatic trimming has some limits in some situations so when you're linking stuff it could be good some ways, but you have to be ready to override it if needed so not always the perfect combo. So yeah, we're pretty happy with how we have set up, obviously we are racing ourselves so when racing comes it’s going to be a different story but doing a lot of tests with this boat and not all the time thinking about the playbook, we're looking to you know decide which foil is faster, which situation is faster and which trimming is faster so other priorities let's say.”

One of the observations from the recon team has been the LEQ12 rising from near-perfect end-plating upwind when the windward board is dropped as the Italians enter into a tack. It’s a phenomenon in all the monohull foilers to date, but Francesco put the debate to bed when asked whether it was an area of focus or an area where improvements could be found as he commented: “Yes and no. I think with dropping the board all we're looking for is stability of the platform. The end-plating doesn't have a big effect on that moment. Today was a pretty easy day because it was flat water, pretty much even when it was blowing 16-17 knots - we consider it now flat water after being Barcelona - so yeah we're really hoping to have more waves for the rest of the session, whenever there are good waves we have to jump into the opportunity but today was definitely an easy day.”

Luna Rossa Prada Pirelli put in a stunning 65 manoeuvres today across tacks and gybes and were foiling for some 112 minutes. Impressive just gets better and better and this intense A/B foil testing session in Cagliari is proving to be highly productive for the hardest driving challenger in this America’s Cup cycle.

Back in Barcelona, the W-Hotel is lit up in red indicating the imminent return of Alinghi Red Bull Racing after their short team summer holiday. It’s hot in the Mediterranean but the action is ramping up in the America’s Cup with all teams scheduled to sail on Tuesday 22nd – stay tuned.