America's Cup, glamour conditions serve up Barcelona perfection

Oh, Barcelona you absolute beauty. Another day, another champagne sailing session of sun and wind for NYYC American Magic and Orient Express Racing Team who simply had it all – a flat sea to start, and a building breeze giving the perfect arena for some superb training. Meanwhile down in Jeddah, with temperatures soaring at 36 degrees, the wind took its time to fill in the afternoon, but Alinghi Red Bull Racing got some serious pre-start and short course training under their belt with some great playbook tactics on display.

The big story of the day though was back in Barcelona with NYYC American Magic. Earlier in the week, the team swapped over rigs and sails between the two AC40s with Magic receiving the upgraded mast that ‘America’ had been running previously as well as the new MC4 mainsail which features the bigger clew board and presumably a host of mainsheet and lower third controls that are significantly improved. ‘Magic’ with Lucas Calabrese and Harry Melges steering has been sensational all week and again it proved today.

On long speed-test runs early in the session, Magic was electric, particularly downwind with the crew able to sail deeper angles and keep maximum pace on. Then when it came to racing, and especially in the opening race, again Magic was sensational with speed to burn. All was looking set for a second race but then a highly curious and uncharacteristic capsize from Tom Slingsby and Paul Goodison on ‘America’ brought what was looking like a brilliant session to a dramatic end. America’s cockpits flooded and the chase boat team towed her home slowly after almost 30 minutes capsized.

Head-scratching all-round, but proving once again that capsizing is all part of the AC40 game – even for the very best sailors in the world. Expect the NYYC American Magic bounce back to be strong.

For Orient Express Racing, the French Challenger for the Louis Vuitton 37th America’s Cup it was a smart move by the meteorology team to call for a pre-noon dock-out as they made the absolute best of the afternoon – even heading offshore to dice in the bigger seas that were rapidly building into the afternoon. Big strides being taken by the French and their talent is certainly not in question, they are fast learners.

The big concentration today was on manoeuvre execution within tight boundaries and over lengthy upwind and downwind legs, presumably racing against a simulated opponent on their onboard electronics, they were nailing it. Thierry Douillard, Team Coach, was impressed saying: “At this stage where we're trying to push as much as we can on our boat handling and when you are on the racecourse you have boundaries or you have to tack in a certain area so it gives you more timing so you don't delay too much your manoeuvres, so was good for us and today, we tried also to increase bigger legs with more manoeuvres at the top of the range, was good training.”

Asked what advice he is imparting, Thierry, who has been at the forefront of the foiling revolution for years now, said: “It was pretty good in the average, we are fine tuning and we were able to do a lot of tacks and gybes, we went a bit off shore with more sea-state and after we came back to be more flat and to start to turn a bit on the racecourse so was a good day... we are speaking most of the time with them by the comms just giving feedback like how is the stability of the platform in average, or some different points on the twist of the sails or whatever, and we try to communicate with a good idea what's going on.”

A nosedive after a downwind, high-speed gybe full-stopped the day for the French with Thierry saying: “We were not sure about one or two functions on the boat so the boat captain decided to ask us to come back to the harbour, nothing major but we don’t want to take a risk when you're on the top of range and you have some things that aren’t working properly, it could be an issue...nothing too major but when you start to have gremlins you say ‘okay’ and we already had a good day.” Great to witness the trajectory the French are on at the moment.

One team that knows all too well just how hard it is to climb that trajectory is Alinghi Red Bull Racing who are living, breathing, snorting proof that time on the water is the absolute key to success. Out in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, sailing from their wonderful Obhur Creek base, it was a compelling light air session that pitted Arnaud Psarofaghis and Maxime Bachelin against the hired guns oozing with experience and class of Dean Barker and Phil Robertson.

On balance the ‘young guns’ had the best of the day once again and showed some superb technique to keep on the foils and when engaged, some really mature match-racing skills. One beautiful sequence caught on camera was an anti-sync lead-back into the line with the chasing boat ducking as the lead boat luffed. Expect to see plenty of this come the Louis Vuitton Cup – and in AC75s! It’s electric to watch even in the AC40s.

The weather in Jeddah was the issue today. The region has been hit with a heatwave topping 36 degrees (Yves Detrey no doubt is more than happy – he likes warm weather sailing) but the technicians were onboard monitoring the heat generation and unfortunately the wind didn’t quite filter in as much as the team had hoped with the majority of the session conducted in just 5-9 knots of breeze.

Speaking afterwards, Julien Pilate, the always affable Sail Designer for Alinghi Red Bull Racing gave an interesting interview talking through the sail programme, always looking ahead with one eye to the AC75 ‘BoatOne’ that will launch soon in Barcelona. With both boats running slightly different J1 jib plans, Julien commented: “I guess we are playing a bit with the size, you know with the AC75 rules you are able to play with the area but also the luff length, so the J1 we had today is part of the development. We had one pretty recent J1 and another one was a bit older and it’s just a continuation of the sail development that we had for the big boat and that's what you've seen today... you might have noticed the J2-5 has one more batten so we play a bit with some sail design tricks to see what was the impact on the flying shape and how the sail was behaving aerodynamically so those feedbacks for us are really important for the sail of ‘BoatOne’ that we're about to launch and we’re pretty close to submit a few designs for ‘BoatOne’ so it was good feedback.”

Talking about the sail programme overall, an area that Alinghi Red Bull Racing have wisely invested a lot of testing time to, Julien commented: “I think it’s good learnings. So far we have managed to learn a lot from those sails and especially to have two boats I think for us was really good learning and we can have direct feedback, there is no way to lie, that's usually what's happening on the water - you compare one boat to another and if one is performing better you can draw your own conclusion.”

With speculation around the design features of the, as yet, unseen new boat that is being prepared back in Barcelona, Julien responded to suggestions around the deck/sail connection with a very interesting answer: “The pressure distribution around the sails through the hull design is something that we're all looking at, even an AC40 has some aero devices that are announcing this part so yeah it's in the design brief and yeah for sure we will see some of those aero features on the boat.”

Make no mistake, the race for the Louis Vuitton 37th America’s Cup is ramping up and we are just days away now from seeing the pinnacle of foiling yacht design from some of the greatest designers, engineers and scientists in the world. Are you getting excited yet? We are.