America's Cup: solid test day in Barcelona to round off a perfect week

Long before many Barcelona residents had enjoyed their first morning coffee, INEOS Britannia had docked-out their two AC40s, taking full advantage of 15-17 knots out by the airport with flat water and only a residual swell, making it ideal for a full-on four-and-a-half-hour session to round off the week.

The INEOS Britannia base has been humming since this intense training session kicked-off in the middle of January with the superb shore team pulling monster hours to get the team’s two AC40s ‘Athena’ and ‘Sienna’ in tip-top race condition day after day. Furthermore, the technicians and design office have performed wonders in diagnosing and fixing whatever speed issue ‘Athena’ was suffering from and today the proof was there to see.

With Sir Ben Ainslie and Giles Scott, the duo with more gold medals between them than the rest of the fleet combined, helming today, it was an absolute masterclass in boat-handling and execution over six short course races which they utterly dominated in ‘Athena’ with what looked like speed to burn. Starting predominantly to windward and then controlling the tactics, Ainslie and Scott with Bleddyn Mon and Leigh McMillan trimming, looked sharp, relaxed and focussed as they pulled the moves, tied up ‘Sienna’ in knots and simply sailed away. This was a big marker of intent and more than a fair reward for the sheer hard work the team have been putting in over the recent training block.

Again today, we saw the team testing sails with ‘Athena’ launching an LEQ12 J2 jib which was just out of range whilst ‘Sienna’ stayed on the one-design J3 – an interesting exercise and one that INEOS Britannia used effectively to get real-time data on the cross-over. Other than that, no tech to report as both boats are predominantly in one-design mode. For now, the British go on a 10-day maintenance break which will give the shore team time to catch up on the endless job list whilst for the sailors it will be a welcome break after an intense period.

Speaking afterwards, Bleddyn Mon, who is a superb asset linking the design and sailing teams together, and was onboard the dominant ‘Athena’ today gave his assessment saying: “We were going well today on Boat A, we kind of felt we got locked in nicely, we did some line-ups before the racing as well and seemed to be going quite well in those (and in the racing) always had quite strong positions to windward off the start line and carried that through to the racing as well.”

Talking about the LEQ J2 jib Bleddyn added: “Initially we were both on the J3 and then thought that the breeze may have been dropping a little bit, so thought it might be a good opportunity to have a look at the J2 but unfortunately the breeze kicked in again and stayed up so a bit out of range on that jib. But yeah, all good racing, and kind of interesting being out there and pushing hard on the two boats.”

Great session from the British again and some superb race analysis below from the on-water recon, Olympic coach, Sebastian Peri Brusa.

As INEOS Britannia docked on just after midday and the last of what they’re calling the ‘drainage’ breeze, NYYC American Magic were just getting ready for an afternoon session anticipating the new southerly sea-breeze coming in and bang on cue, after a short wait, it surely did and the team’s planned sail testing programme began in earnest.

Plenty of straight-line stuff as the American team really get into the detail and tweaks of the AC40 – even at launch they were weighing the boats with a load cell and clearly keen to get the two boats as even as possible to form a baseline for comparison. Impressive stuff and the crews rotated around, eliminating any human bias to get solid data from a near-perfect afternoon of flat-water and an upper limit of 12 knots of breeze.

Speaking afterwards, the highly experienced trimmer Andrew Campbell, who was on both boats today, was delighted with the team’s work this week saying: “Really big week for us. To get on the water all five days is a win, we ticked a lot of boxes in those first couple of days getting these two boats back on the water, we had that great stint with ‘Patriot’ and getting these boats on the water as quickly and turned around like that as we did was a testament to the Shore Crew here...We're scrambling for every minute we can get everyday so you know we feel really lucky to get summer like conditions these last three days here and we're making the most of them as best we can but every minute we can get on the water is absolute gold here so we forced a couple of days early on just to see if we could get anything and then to get really good sailing these last three days is a win.”

Talking about the impressive sail wardrobe that American Magic are trialling, Andrew added: “The sails all have their own little subtle differences, and they all have their own targets you’re trying to hit and you're trying to explore different areas for different sails. Obviously some sails are meant to do different things and some sails are meant to do the same things with different settings so we're trying to piece that all together as trimmers, you're going out and trying to give good feedback to the designers so what information they give us we take away and put on the water and say yeah this worked, this didn't, this is what we think we have to change and then it's back to the data side - it will be real data heavy these next couple days trying to sift through a lot of good information.”

A fine end to a stellar week for all the teams here in Barcelona - the place is really buzzing with sailing action. Luna Rossa Prada Pirelli are scheduled to sail on Saturday whilst the rest will be back and firing on all cylinders on Monday with Orient Express Racing, fresh from their new sponsor announcement of the Renault Alpine team today, coming back in full LEQ12 mode. Stay tuned. (Magnus Wheatley)