The shared America’s Cup recon programme ended Saturday with just 60 days left before the start of the Louis Vuitton 37th America’s Cup.
Although the teams will no longer be watched and reported on by the recon teams they are not allowed to race and test with other teams until early August, when they get a couple of practise days ahead of the Barcelona Preliminary Regatta (22-25 Aug).
During that period it is expected that the teams will be setting up their own spy programmes to monitor the latest gear being fitted and tweaked by their rivals, and any noticable performance gains.
The Preliminary Regatta is the first major stepping stone to be negotiated and will be followed very quickly by the Louis Vuitton Cup – Challenger Selection Series (29 Aug-7 Oct) to choose the actual Cup challenger.
INEOS Britannia were on the water Saturday, unfortunately rigged with a small area mainsail for stronger wind, that meant the first part of the session was largely under-powered.
The new foil flaps fitted Friday on the port side have very much been the focus for the team and asked whether he could feel the difference, Ben Ainslie responded:
“It’s pretty hard to pick out in these kind of conditions necessarily straight line performance of the tips but we’re really just looking for what we can see in in the manoeuvres, you know the foil coming in and out of the water and obviously for the pilots to get a feel for what they like and there are some other nuances but that’s something we’ll keep in-house.”
Overnight the Ineos team re-modelled the jib track fairing which was causing issues on Friday and Ben praised the team saying:
“We had a slight modification with the jib track fairing just tightening that up a bit, the guys have done a nice job, we had a bit of an issue with it yesterday, we made the major modifications today, and it worked albeit in the lighter airs but we still need to give it a run through in some decent breeze.”
Also on the water Saturday was NYYC American Magic who managed some valuable bottom-end training time with Paul Goodison and Lucas Calabrese staying patient and coaxing ‘Patriot’ into flight, in what could be key conditions at the very bottom end of the range of the wind limit.
Tom Burnham, Team Coach for NYYC American Magic commented . . . “There’s a lot of technique and a lot of lot of design work that’s gone into making that happen so it’s nice to be able to get some practise at it.”
Alinghi Red Bull Racing had a much better day performance-wise and enjoyed some rule-stretching criss-crossing with Luna Rossa Prada Pirelli upwind and down.
Gilberto Nobili, Operation Manager for Luna Rossa described the close encounters as . . . “normal that you crisscross and I mean we are far from the race, I mean they are very close, it is learning from on the water with somebody around.”
Luna Rossa Prada Pirelli have been impressing all week and they looked imperious with easy flight being achieved and real poise when engaged. On the face of it, it would seem that Luna Rossa is the team that everyone is watching and their overall package and sailing ability is really shining through at the moment.
Once again Marco Gradoni was getting wheel time alongside Jimmy Spithill and it was a productive four hours of sailing with 42 tacks at a foil-to-foil ratio of 93% and 28 gybes at 96%. Impressive stats from the Italians.
From reports by Magnus Wheatley and on-board recon teams.
