Just five days after revealing a new starboard foil, Emirates Team New Zealand were back at it again today with the unveiling of a new starboard foil in Auckland that clearly shows the direction of travel for foil design in this Cup cycle. 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.
On the water, it was a remarkably smooth session that started somewhat gingerly as the sailors got used to the new foil set-up but it wasn’t long before confidence was assured and they put more and more pressure onto the new foil.
Single-board round ups by the mid-point of the session confirmed that the team were more than happy with their new shoe whilst tacks and gybes looked incredibly smooth. Flight was noticeably lower today when sailing on starboard tack with the new foil and in a south-easterly morning breeze that gave the test session a steady 15 knots, it was perfect for pushing into the analysis. In the afternoon, with the breeze dropping to around 10 knots, the sailors got a great chance to look at the foil down-range and were popping easily to flight.
Speaking about the new foil, no-one better than Flight Controller and Trimmer Andy Maloney who was hugely impressed with this first outing saying: “Both foils are pretty awesome to be honest, both sort of a pleasure to fly and yeah just looking at the finer details of them in the trade-offs between the two and trying to get a feel for them across the wind range.”
And Andy continued: “Yeah really happy with the day, putting both foils through their paces and tested them out as much as we could across the wind range and at the end we got some nice light winds as well so really happy to get that full wind range today and you know we ticked all the boxes and really happy with the results.”
Asked what the plan is coming up, it’s a case of more of the same as the team bring both new foils up to speed and test through the rang as Andy said: “Yeah still just a bit of everything you know slowly getting more and more aggressive with the manoeuvres and the loading of them and yeah just feel out those differences.”
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. In truth, the Kiwis made it look easy and that’s the mark of the level that they are at in sailing terms. More to come this week from the Defenders of the 37thAmerica’s Cup. (Magnus Wheatley)
On-Water Recon Report – Emirates Team New Zealand: Today was day 57 of testing on the LEQ12 for Emirates Team New Zealand. An exciting day today as another new foil wing, this time on the port side, was released, this coming 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 although more analysis through the recon photos is needed to be certain of these observations.
The sailing day started with moderate breeze averaging around 15 knots before dropping later in the session to as low as 9 knots at times but remained mostly around 10-11 knots. Dock out was at 10:00 and the team were back in at 12:55 after a positive session out on the gulf. Sails used today were the M2 main, and J3 jib to start with before changing to the larger J2 later in the session as the breeze dropped.
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.
All the testing was carried out in the area of Bean Rock to the north of Rangitoto Lighthouse where a yellow harbour marker was being utilised as a top rounding mark. 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.
Towards the end of the session, 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.
After ending the session with a multitude of manoeuvres, the team finished up the session with a long port downwind/reach back up the harbour where sails were dropped just off the viaduct at 12:45.
