America's Cup, all action Italians sign off for Christmas in style

It’s the pre-Christmas tale with a very happy fairytale ending for Luna Rossa Prada Pirelli who signed off their 2023 sailing season in style with a blistering display of up-range, heavy weather sailing on an angry looking Bay of Angels albeit with a relatively flat sea-state and gusts upward of 20 knots at times.

In those conditions and with the December 4th nosedive in mind, we can absolutely forgive the Flight Controllers, Umberto Molineris and Vittorio Bissaro, for flying the bow a little higher than usual but what they showed was ultimate control over a series of desperately fast laps that will have the foil analysers back at base salivating at the data they extracted.

The team are also running a completely new rudder set-up with shorter wings and a new elevator and are keen to test it through the range of sea state and breeze. Again, the foil set up was the same with Wing01 (the team’s first foil iteration on the LEQ12) set on the starboard side, whilst on port hung Wing04, the foil that so much hope is perhaps riding on for the AC75 currently well into its build schedule.

The logic of running the Wing01 against the considerable refinement of Wing04 is completely understandable as the team will have oodles of data from that first foil in a variety of conditions to baseline Wing04 against. Naturally the data is top secret, but Luna Rossa are looking very comfortable on starboard tack with the new foil seemingly rapier fast through manoeuvres and extremely stable in a straight line with the team running the outboard tip clear of the water surface more often than not indicating a wider cant. Over the short courses that Marco Gradoni and Francesco Bruni relentlessly pushed the LEQ12 during this entertaining near three-and-a-half-hour session, the team executed an estimated 50 manoeuvres with an 84% foil-to-foil ratio. Impressive.

Just for good measure, and to blow any Christmas cobwebs away, on the return to the harbour with the wind gusting and shifting all over the place, the team had a slow-motion capsize as they attempted to pick up the Chase Boat tow that ended up with three crew on the foil arm to right it (we haven’t seen that before!) as the Chase team towed the boat into the wind. One poor crew-member certainly got a festive dunking. No issues though, all part of the game and the Italians returned to base at 12.50pm.

Speaking afterwards, Francesco Bruni summed up the day saying: “It's been a great day for many reasons. First of all we are back from a long period of break and the boat is functioning very well, we sailed today in 20 plus knots and the boat was going really, really, well. We had a few races around the course, very happy with how we were manoeuvring and the speed of the boat so very, very, productive day. And just at the end we had a capsize when we were hooking the tow and always when we're going slow is probably the hardest moment - it always happens or most of the time happens when you're going slow but we managed to right the boat, a few problems with the electronics not working maybe because of water so we couldn't move the mast but then finally we raised the boat up and was all good no big problems.”

When probed about the new rudder wings and elevator and how the rudder feels for Francesco who is one of the most attuned and experienced helms in the America’s Cup, he added: “As always is a very hard balance between something that is good in flat water and something that can be good in waves. We still have to check everything with waves as we only sailed with flat water yesterday and today, so still have to decide what is better because as you know it's very different.”

With the re-commissioned LEQ12 showing unbelievable form after its miraculous repair in record time, the team will be welcoming back their AC40 in the New Year for training for the Youth & Women’s teams plus will also be launching their hydrogen boat early in 2024. Francesco is clear though on the focus saying:” For sure we are sailing until the AC75 will be ready, so we will sail as long as we can and then we have to balance the energies between putting the big boat in the water and sailing so it’s going to be a very interesting time.”

‘Buon Natale e un Felice Anno Nuovo’ to the Luna Rossa Prada Pirelli team.