America's Cup, glamour Jeddah and limit up in Cagliari

Alinghi Red Bull Racing were back in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia on Wednesday, taking full advantage of near perfect 8-12 knot conditions and a flat sea-state to get vital hours on the water ahead of the America’s Cup Preliminary Regatta, presented by NEOM, that is now only a matter of days away from kicking off in earnest with the Practice Races starting on Wednesday 29th November.

The Swiss have been focussed on this regatta like no other team, having completed a solid six-day block of two-boat training earlier in the month and now are the first team back on the water in the days leading up to the start. After the first Preliminary Regatta in Vilanova in September, there was a sense around the team of unfinished business as they ran well in races and were then let down by a hydraulics failure before the last race. This is a team that knows the podium beckons if they can extract the learnings from training and pull it all together when it matters – time on the water always matters.

Hard to bet against them – they looked rock-solid in testing today with superb sail handling technique through the transitions, particularly gybe-to-gybe downwind, keeping the traveller high at the exit and then lowering down the track as the new windward board is raised. There’s an artistry to that manoeuvre that we see the very best trimmers executing with the emphasis on the absolute correct time to ease the traveller down as the new leeward board grips and the flight of the hull dips. What we saw on film was close to perfection.

After the Chase Boat team put down marker buoys to create tight gates, it was gloves off pre-start practice between Arnaud Psarofaghis and Maxime Bachelin on one boat, with Phil Robertson and Dean Barker on the other. Once off the line, little quarter was given with on-the-bow tacks when ahead and speed tests to leeward. 

Interestingly the team were running two different bespoke aspect J1 jibs – one with a square cut top and more volume in the foot and the other with a tapered head and less volume lower down. Not much to choose from in relative speed terms as Team Rigger, Rob Salthouse confirmed after sailing: “All pretty similar I mean we’re just ticking through stuff and ticking through sails that we’re learning from and so yeah it went really well today…Both sails were in range, top end of the range at the end of it, but you know we take the learnings from there and move forward so really nice day on the water.” The recon team noted that: "the J1-3 performed better upwind but the J1-4 was able to sail deeper downwind."

Rob described the day, saying: “Yeah good, again glamour sailing conditions here - really nice actually, shorts and T-shirts and 8 to 12 knots: perfect…We saw in the first session here that we can get a bit of everything, and we had a bit of everything earlier on a couple of days ago, so you know like any place in the world you sail there’s always weather that gets thrown at you that you’re not expecting.”

Out on the racecourse, clearly the brief to Phil Robertson and Dean Barker was to apply maximum pressure onto the presumed starting line-up for the regatta (Psarofaghis/Bachelin/Mettraux/Detrey) and with the hard-charging Jason Waterhouse and Nicolas Rolaz on trim, it was great practice. One notable move saw Psarofaghis cross Barker on starboard and then slam tack hard onto port to steal his wind. Barker thought about tacking to free himself from the cover, then switched and went for speed on port to try and fight out under the lee but lost the control of the foils and splashed down. Great racing at a high intensity from the Swiss who will be relentless now through to the start of the regatta.  

As thrilling as it was in Jeddah, down in autumnal Cagliari the action was white-hot with Luna Rossa Prada Pirelli putting in yet another stunning few hours of foil testing at pace. This was all about going to the limit on the ‘final card’ Wings 03 & 04 that were being fully assessed with cameras, flow strips and pressure strips laden over the wings and flaps at strategic points. In a building breeze, the team docked out at 10am and were back on the dock by 11.50am but the intensity was remarkable as the Flight Controllers dialled Luna Rossa low to the water on wide cant angles and deep rudder immersion with an almost bow-up mode as the breeze built towards un-sailable.

Time and again Jimmy Spithill and Francesco Bruni applied the maximum pressure on the foils performing rapid bear aways both one-board and two-board before swinging round into hair-raising round-ups at pace but with full control. This was foiling at the very peak of human ability and a privilege to watch. Sail trim was on point with an accuracy that will have other teams in the America’s Cup taking note with the J4 and the slightly smaller M2 mainsail working beautifully together, occasionally it was suspected in tandem on the bear-aways and few issues with the Foil Cant System today that has plagued the last few sessions. Great sailing from the Italians who, it was reported in La Stampa newspaper in Italy have selected Marco Gradoni and Ruggera Tita to helm in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia at The America’s Cup Preliminary Regatta, presented by NEOM, next week. 

Speaking afterwards, Andrea Tesei, the highly impressive Flight Controller, summed up the day saying: “Today we pushed the boat out to the limit, we tested the upper range of the boat so high-speed numbers and big loads on in bear-ways and round-ups. We're getting close to the end of the development process of this boat on foils etc so we're kind of testing the limits of our yacht.”

Training is producing results for Luna Rossa and as Andrea said: “Obviously we’re starting to build our playbook, now we’ve started to focus a bit more on handling exactly like today, pushing the boat and getting manoeuvres in so as we develop our skills. We kind of get in place some new techniques on the sail trim and all the cant positions, trim etc so we are building up a solid playbook…The trade-off is having a fast foil and fast systems relative to control so that's always the limit - the compromise between speed and control so that's the edge you need to get right.”

Looking forward to Jeddah next week, Andrea added: “Everybody obviously is excited; we’ve got a race coming up soon and it's always a nice benchmark and to get among the other teams and feel the competition and the heat of the competition, but obviously our main focus is on this development boat, we want to get this last month right and get the right choices in for the racing boat.”

With Marco Gradoni and Ruggero Tita travelling to Jeddah, it’s unclear if the team will continue to run the LEQ12 programme in Cagliari whilst the Preliminary Regatta is underway with Andrea unsure when asked. We will keep you posted here on the America’s Cup website.  

For NYYC American Magic, it was a day that promised much but unexpectedly turned into a cancellation with the team calling the afternoon session at the harbour entrance with a wicked Mistral blowing in from the north and whipping up white-capped waves in the immediate vicinity of the America’s Cup racecourse in Barcelona.

Tom Burnham, Team Coach, praised both his helms and the RIB drivers for outstanding seamanship in holding the boat on station and summed up the day perfectly saying: “We were expecting it to be a little bit of a strange day, we knew there was a big Mistral blowing over a few miles away from us and we knew that line was there and it was pretty windy and there was a chance that the Mistral would get here to us, but we didn't think it would happen until much later in the day and luckily the timing worked out that it came at just the right time that we had the mainsail up and we were about to pull the jib up and then all of a sudden we're getting 30 knot puffs and before we bore away and went outside the harbour…really lucky we were able to just make the call quickly there to take the mainsail down and get back in the dock before anything bad happened.”

The American team will be back on the water tomorrow, with Tom hedging his bets saying: “Our forecast looks like it's pretty good tomorrow morning, we'll see what happens, it's a really tricky period but tomorrow morning looks pretty good and it actually looks like it's quite light tomorrow afternoon so who knows what we’ll get…We actually had a J1 on the Chase Boat today thinking that it might be quite light airs for a couple of hours but obviously that didn't materialise so anyway we'll wake up in the morning and see what's happening.”