Just five days after revealing a new starboard foil, Emirates Team New Zealand were back at it again.
Monday was day 57 of testing on the LEQ12 for Emirates Team New Zealand, with another new foil wing, this time on the port side, was released, just 5 test days after the release of the new starboard foil.
Both foils are very similar style shapes with slight differences seen mostly in the trailing edge/flap profiles – starboard looking more defined and triangular, where port looks to be slightly more rounded and potentially larger in area.
An elliptical trailing edge is perhaps the most noticeable difference with a cut-away inner winglet detail and a full-length flap featuring on the new foil with the wing noticeably aft of the, once again, highly sculptured bulb that appears to have leeway-reducing sidewalls leading to the pointy tip.
With new generation and similar foils side to side, the team today were very focussed on testing manoeuvres and acceleration.
Some slightly different turn rates were seen at times, but on the most part it was just a day of dialling in efficient tacks and gybes. As the crew onboard become more confident, they could be seen pushing harder on single board round ups and even round ups with late board drop tacks, all in one smooth turn rate.
Many late tack bear-aways were seen and the team was looking very confident on this new foil package.
The other thing to note is the fact that there was literally no learning curve on this new port foil. Obviously, the controls and human input issues in the first days of the new starboard foil have been learnt and were crossed over to the port foil as well.
A 96% foil-to-foil ratio across 51 manoeuvres was the tale of the tape for the day and on those numbers the Performance Analysts will be pleased with what they saw.
Towards the end of the session, the breeze dropped significantly to the point where there were a couple of lulls in which the yacht was unable to foil.
As soon as there was a puff of 10-11knots, however, the yacht popped up onto the foils with relative ease. This gives credit to the low end lift these new foils seem to be able to manage.
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