The story of the day in Barcelona was the sheer performance of INEOS Britannia, who, for the first time, let it rip downwind on a huge 10 mile run and at a truly astonishing pace.
The commissioning of RB3 looks to be going well and today was the moment to show its potential with Sir Ben Ainslie and Dylan Fletcher-Scott starting to sail the boat supremely smoothly and with growing confidence in the platform.
Ainslie has been rightly cautious and methodical in the approach to commissioning, writing at length in the British media about the process and the team’s approach. Today it paid handsome dividends.
RB3 looks to be something quite special with its muscularity bristling all over and every inch looks designed to the absolute maximum.
Arguably the best end-plating design we’ve seen so far, she just attains beautiful flight upwind and today on long straight-line runs the team pushed harder than we’ve seen before – and got their reward.
During sailing they completed the first gybe ever from RB3 after a short upwind when they suddenly they put the windward arm down and surprisingly bore-away into a downwind for the first time.
The bow trend was to pitch down at the beginning but after stabilizing the boat they put the windward arm up and sailed with the lowest height as possible.
Slowly they won confidence and started to fly higher but bouncing a little bit with the bustle against the water’s surface, the mainsheet track was in the middle of the track and seemed to be quite static.
Then after RB3 did her first gybe with a nice entrance, releasing a bit the mainsheet track halfway to leeward but at the exit of the manoeuvre the bow pitched down to the sea surface, making the boat lose quite a lot of speed, but it was the first gybe ever from RB3!
When sailing on port they started to increase the speed and started to find the right balance while testing different heights.
They gybed again and then the helm went back to Ben Ainslie whom after some minutes of looking for the right flight trim released the brakes and pushed RB3 for some solid 40+ knots as far as he could sailing almost 10 miles on the same gybe.
RB3 sailed with the keel parallel to the sea surface most of the time with a stable height, mast perpendicular to the sea level, mast track on the centre, mast semi rotated to windward, mainsail cambered on the bottom and with a light twist that seemed to begin from the spreader level.
Trim was very smooth with small movements of mast rotation and mainsheet and, on occasion, the bustle was carefully touching the sea surface and coming back to place quickly finding high stability again.
Speaking afterwards, about whether RB3 was at its maximum today and when we will see that potential at its fullest, Will Bakewell, Test and Validation Team Leader for INEOS Britannia honest response was:
“No, not really, we’re still in that work up phase but it was just nice to allow them to sail within the limits that we set so yeah all pretty good.
