America's Cup: blistering Luna Rossa carve up Cagliari

It was only 8-12 knots of breeze in Sardinia but out on the Bay of Angels, Luna Rossa Prada Pirelli put in their usual blistering, high octane performance today just launching the LEQ12 after a week of AC40 sailing for their Youth & Women’s teams.

Marco Gradoni, the young Italian sailing sensation was at the wheel after leading the Youth team training last week and rotated in with Ruggero Tita and Francesco Bruni for a day that had it all. Some blistering straight-lines were executed to get their eye-in and then the LEQ12 was set up against the onboard software for some electric pre-start action – quite how good those onboard programs have become is something that the sailing world waits to see - the evidence before us looks compelling however. Once the Chase Boat had dropped in a leeward gate and set the pre-start box we were treated to every move of the playbook with seemingly easy one-board round-ups, JK’s and two-board speed killers pre-start. Great session from the Italians...again.

Speaking afterwards, Marco Gradoni, summed up the day eloquently saying: “It was nice because today we went back into some waves and it is nice because it's January but it feels like summer, sun, wind from the south, so it was good day like in waves and we were happy about our day and I think 100% foiling - that's our goal.”

Asked about the relentless JK’s at the leeward marks, Marco simply responded: “There was some bias and we got some shifts so we were playing our best geometries...to be fair we were only one boat in the water so we just played the software but it would be nice to play against another boat but probably the next day we will do it.”

And when asked how excited he was to be a part of the Luna Rossa Youth team (if not the Cup boat itself), he classily responded: “Yeah the guys we sailed together last week it’s nice, they’re all super-good, it’s a pleasure to sail with them and it's ‘funny’ so let’s hope we can do some racing against also Cecco, Jimmy and Rugi in the next few months.”

Meanwhile over in Barcelona, for INEOS Britannia it was a lower-end test again as the relentless high pressure sits over the western Mediterranean with wide isobars yielding a soft northerly airflow that struggled to get above 7 knots all morning. The team docked-out early at 8.30am and headed for the airport down south but a residual easterly swell meant any meaningful racing was a stretch. To make the best of the day, the team went for the biggest J1 jibs, mixed up the Flight Controllers and went for various speed tests right at the lower end of foiling. Interestingly today, the recon team noted very little in terms of speed differential between the two AC40’s and having had a good weekend to go through the data and the design analysis, it’s likely that INEOS Britannia with their technical excellence all round will, perhaps, have ironed out those differences.

Speaking afterwards, helmsman Dylan Fletcher-Scott summed up the day saying: “It was quite a tricky forecast today, with the cloud cover and we were sort of expecting some drainage this morning but stayed a bit cloudy and didn’t clear enough so the wind didn’t quite materialise at the airport disappointing, but we made the best of the day and at the end of the day there was there's nothing on the Barcelona race area.”

Ever positive, Dylan also saw the day through a productive light saying: “Days like today are really good for us in terms of the difficulty with the sea state in light winds something that we’re obviously expecting during the Cup here in October and so although maybe not like all about some small detail it's good for us to work on our techniques and see what will transfer over for the big boat.”

Alinghi Red Bull Racing stayed in the Port Vell today having launched their AC75 ‘BoatZero’ with the old legacy NYYC American Magic rudder and the Shore Team conducted a thorough day of Foil Cant System analysis spending almost seven hours in the water going through systems checks all over. The Swiss will be eyeing an improving forecast later in the week to get back to AC75 sailing in Barcelona.