America's Cup, Swiss clock 100 days in BoatZero

A pretty special day for Alinghi Red Bull Racing as the team recorded their 100th day of sailing in ‘BoatZero’ in Barcelona with a stunning performance from the sailors that mirrored the brilliance they displayed yesterday in similar conditions. With a strong south-westerly greeting the Swiss, with gusts at first up to some 27 knots, this was a session of high intensity where the Flight Controllers showed maturity and skill in keeping the AC75 low and fast, often using double boards in the pre-starts, and the helms put on another masterclass of accuracy.

Fast forward to the end of October 2023 and it’s a very changed scenario. ‘BoatZero’ looks like a completely different vessel, staffed by sailors showing their hard-won talent and techniques with consummate confidence. Manoeuvres are executed with commitment, mark-roundings are a lesson in co-ordination and the sail trim is pure symmetry in action. Ride height is precise – low and fast – with the ability to dictate according to conditions and unafraid to ride high downwind or around marks. It’s impressive to watch and whilst much credit goes to the sailing team, equal praise can be shared around from the coaches through to the shore and chase teams. Ernesto Bertarelli, the founder of the syndicate, must be very pleased with what he’s seeing his team achieve.

Alinghi Red Bull Racing’s young team have come so, so far and on a day like today in Barcelona, with flat water and a solid, building breeze they could push on, perform the drills and look tasty whilst doing it. Yesterday they sailed very well. Today they capitalised and laid down a serious marker of intent for the upcoming racing in 2024 with all eyes on the Louis Vuitton Cup in August.

The thirst for learning goes on though with the team who retain a real humility and passion about how they operate. Felipe Portilla, one of the Swiss team’s electronics engineers summed it up perfectly afterwards saying: “We are focused on trying to capture as much data as we can from the boat for the conditions in Barcelona so I guess in the future we have to be ready for what can happen in next year because at the end we are going to have these conditions so I would say that every day is a learning day so we will try to apply that to the boat…every single day is new and different for us here. In Barcelona the conditions are completely different every day and the designers and us are learning from that and then we will apply that.”

Docking out today just before 11.30am, the team were quickly into their warm-up drills setting the smaller M2 mainsail and J3 jib and beginning the session sat in displacement preparing for flight. Crew-work looked tight from the outset with a smooth flight in a breeze that struggled above 6 knots and, in those conditions, the legacy Emirates Team New Zealand T-foil on the starboard wing arm is always favoured for take-off. Once launched, they never looked back and after a quick stop, the pedal was pressed to the floor with an upwind and downwind that saw speeds well into the high forty-knot barrier on a super low ride with BoatZero hugging the surface and looking powerful. Notable were the wide cant angles that induce the low ride and an upwind trim that saw the jib almost on the centreline whilst the mainsail traveller was regularly above with a beautifully cambered sail-shape.

As is usual in Barcelona, the south-westerly picked-up just before 1pm and the call was made to skip code and drop down to the very manageable J5 jib which places even more emphasis on mainsail control for de-powering. Now the skins were being trimmed heavily on the cunningham and mainsheet to induce a much flatter profile that in the lulls looked almost over-done. The Chase team had thrown in marks and a starting gate and it’s here where the team came alive.

Arnaud Psarofaghis and Maxime Bachelin’s time-on-distance was almost perfect start after start and the team practiced the two-board entry to the starting box when coming in on port – something that we will see a lot more of in breeze above 12 knots when we get to the Louis Vuitton Cup next year. The two boards immersed gives the helms so many options and Alinghi Red Bull Racing, although shadow-boxing against an imaginary opposition, very much looked like there might have been a computer system dictating the playbook in those pre-starts. Once away from the line, the team were into quick boundary tacks, ‘JK’ moves around the leeward mark (again with two-boards down) and looked super in-control despite gusts at times that were later said to be some 27 knots.

An unspecified issue, assumed to be with the hydraulic system owing to the aggressive cants the team were exploring today, brought the session to a halt with technicians onboard and soon afterwards at just before 2pm sails were lowered, and the team towed back to base in the Port Vell.

Looking back on the stats on this, the 100th day of ‘BoatZero’ and the coaches can be happy with 100% foil-to-foil over 13 gybes and 20 out of 22 tacks also being foil-to-foil – a superb way to mark a milestone day for the whole Alinghi Red Bull Racing team.