America's Cup, power display in Cagliari for Luna Rossa

An early-morning dock-out from the Luna Rossa Prada Pirelli base offered the Italian Challenger for the Louis Vuitton 37th America’s Cup an outstanding and variable session where they had a little bit of everything. This was a day of pure power and class from a team that seemed to have effortlessly moved from their LEQ12 into the beautiful new AC75 with an ease and assurance that is remarkable.

The biggest take-away from the day was the sheer balance of the boat in flight. In short, she just looks right in flight with the team able to secure near-perfect end-plating and making the bustle in the middle third of the boat work very hard for its living. As the wind increased into the early afternoon, Luna Rossa came alive with some outstanding stints completed that varied between straight-line sailing for data gathering and sail trim purposes and then some smart laps to keep the eyes of the sailors in.

Interesting to see today that in the first stint it was Francesco Bruni and Marco Gradoni joining forces on the wheels (can you imagine being 20 years old and sailing an AC75?) before Jimmy Spithill and the Olympic Gold medallist Ruggero Tita stepped onboard for the latter part of the day. Serious talent is coursing all the way through this Italian challenge, and they didn’t disappoint.

Tacks and gybes were effortlessly foil-to-foil with the team adjusting easily for the conditions – high exit in the light to keep the power on and then rapier-fast angle to angle when the breeze picked up. Majestic manoeuvring, Luna Rossa looked on a tear all day today with pin-point trim and very dynamic traveller control keeping the boat moded mainly flat, leaning on the immersed foil and only briefly showing windward heel – which actually appeared very fast in execution.

In total the team put in some five valuable hours on the water and executed 35 tacks and 31 gybes – a decent tally by any standard and all with legacy foils still onboard. Speaking afterwards, cyclor Enrico Voltolini who was a grinder in the last campaign commented: “It was a perfect day today 12-15 knots, first few laps, lots of manoeuvres and we are learning a lot, very good day.”

Comparing the new role of cyclor versus the old grinding pedestals of the last America’s Cup, Enrico said: “It’s pretty hard now, we are pushing a lot of parts in the accumulator so it’s harder than the handles on the last Cup.”