NYYC American Magic, talent is shining and it’s great to see

When the AC40 was envisioned, this was exactly what the designers had in mind. Desperately close-quarters racing with absolutely zero speed difference to choose between the boats, and everything left up to pure talent, positioning, and dynamite sailing. NYYC American Magic stepped ashore after a thoroughly entertaining race-practice session with smiles and the body language of winners.

None more so than Women’s Team sailor Sara Stone who stepped up into the big league of foiling sailing today doing an heroic job on trim working superbly with Harry Melges on the port side of Magic and gaining fabulous knowledge from Lucas Calabrese and Riley Gibbs on the opposite pods. Sara is a serious distance sailor with some 25,000 ocean miles under her belt and has transferred those skills to the match-race tour, foiling and TP52 racing. A name to seriously watch for the future.

With Barcelona showing spring-like conditions - a positively balmy 20° in the afternoon – the sea was flat, and the SSW wind built and filled to a mean 10 knots with a tad more in the gusts. Enough to foil easily and a perfect day for positional playbook development. The coaches mixed up the day with plenty of pre-start action before releasing the boats over a short course where the width of a blade of grass separated the two. Position is everything, and it will be too when the AC75s come roaring into life in a few months’ time, so the American Magic programme is bang on the training money.

Over eight starts, arguably honours were even and on the first race, Magic aced the combined genius of Tom Slingsby and Paul Goodison to win by a few metres – that must have tasted good! Order was restored in the race to the harbour at the end, with Slingsby and Goodison just having that positional knack to get the lane and then capitalise. Expect this to be their calling card in September – tough to beat.

A valuable, high quality, three hours on the water and Sara Stone summed it up brilliantly afterwards saying: “It was really good conditions, it was much better breeze than the forecast so we're pretty pleased. When we got out there, we thought we'd get just the edge of a dying breeze and that would be it, short day, but the wind was awesome, flat water, and yeah, we had a few hours of really good sailing.”

Sara has been training hard with the NYYC American Magic Women’s Team through the winter on the simulator so comparing that to her on-water experience today and what she took away from the session, she commented: “For sure, time in the water is the most valuable thing, the simulator is really good, and it would have been much harder for me to jump in the boat today without it, but there's nothing like time in the actual boat...For me I think probably the biggest improvement is in the boat racing, so we had two boats out there today so to be able to work on your comms while there's another boat that you're racing against, going through the start line, that's huge...Just going through the range of conditions, for sure like once it gets lighter and it gets a little bit trickier it's harder to stay on the foil through manoeuvres, there's less of a margin for error so the more time in those conditions.”

Having some of the greatest foiling sailors of their generation in the team and more than willing to upskill the next generation, Sara commented on how much is being shared saying: “All the time, I mean all the information that's being shared in debriefs and when we get out on the boat, like today was my first full day out sailing so just having little tips coming all the time to help get me get up to speed faster.”

And the bigger picture, now that the Women’s Team has been selected, the mood in the NYYC American Magic camp seems high as Sara confirmed: “Everyone's excited, everyone’s ready to get sailing yeah really excited...it's really good they'll be a lot of our women's team working together and sailing and mixed crews over the summer, so I mean we all have known each other for a while and get along really well so it's good.”

This is exactly what the Louis Vuitton 37th America’s Cup organisers envisioned, and the scene is getting set for an outstanding UniCredit Youth America’s Cup and the inaugural Puig Women’s America’s Cup in 2024. Talent is shining and it’s great to see. (Magnus Wheatley)