High summer in Auckland and Emirates Team New Zealand were back at it on one of their longest sessions to date in this training block after some ten days shoreside for what was suspected to be a major upgrade in componentry. However, coming back to the water today, very little from the outside to the naked eye looked to have changed with the team running the same asymmetric-foil (FW1207) on port and the FW402 wing on starboard.
Blair Tuke hinted at componentry upgrades, but today’s session looked more to be about data gathering and technique-honing with the new bolt-upright mode really ‘leaning’ in on the immersed foils as opposed to the windward heel mode adopted by so many other teams sailing the AC40 at the moment. Perhaps the mode change is a nod to the new AC75 that is less than two months’ away from launch now or it could be that the mode is designed to extract maximum baseline data from the foils – only the Emirates Team New Zealand design office and performance engineers could explain.
Searching for summer breeze initially, Peter Burling and Nathan Outteridge headed out to the beautiful Coromandel Peninsula and found better pressure into the early afternoon and completed a mammoth five-hour shake-down session with a big concentration on tacking – less so on downwind gybes – and a lot of ride height changes upwind especially.
A small stop to check the port foil – the one that has been of concern in recent sessions since launch was conducted with the Chase Boat alongside and a further stop was recorded by the recons with the sailors looking at the port foil and rig settings. Fine tuning seems to be the name of the game.
Speaking afterwards Blair Tuke, the stalwart Flight Controller and Trimmer, spoke to the recon team and summed up the day saying: “We couldn’t have wished for a better day than that, although the boat’s been off the water for a best part of a week now, we got a huge amount out of today probably one of our longest sessions I think ever, so big gains throughout, first of all just getting back into the swing of things and then really taking some good steps forward…we changed it up between straight-line upwinds and regular tacks as well.”
Asked about the take-aways from the day, Blair added: “Always fine tuning, been off the water for a week, couple of small modifications to a few components, checking how they went, been the same for last few weeks pretty critical time for us in design world, just evaluating how we are feeling on the water, especially on the foil front and how they’re feeling, plenty of data after a five hour session so we’ll go back and look at how those key things that we are looking at performed.”
Emirates Team New Zealand are scheduled to sail on Friday before a break for the weekend.
On-Water Recon Report – Emirates Team New Zealand: Day 64 for Emirates Team New Zealand in the LEQ12 out on the Gulf in Auckland, provided great sailing in a range of conditions. With light NE wind blowing for the start of the session, 3 – 8 knots, the team went with the M2 Main and J2 Jib. Towing down the harbour and then sailing from North Head out towards Tiritiri Matangi.
The day started with very light winds and proved tricky to keep the LEQ12 foiling, with touchdown tacks happening as they sailed upwind. More than once the team relied on a tow up from Chase 1 to get back on the foils. Around 11am the wind started to increase allowing the boat to sail more freely, however the team still didn’t manage to complete consistence foiling tacks. After a break for lunch the team continued to sail upwind past Tiri towards the Coromandel.
At around 12:30 the team swapped from the J2 to the J3 as the wind had built to 12-14 knots from the NE. Sailing upwind from Tiri they went for a long beat towards the Coromandel peninsular. Spending time working on different upwind modes and completing many full foiling tacks. The sea state was increasing the whole time which resulted in different modes being required. Noticed the team seem to be working hard to keep the boat very flat during this upwind rather than windward-heeled.
Now a long way upwind the team completed a bear-away in building sea state and wind. Long downwind legs taken with much less manoeuvres completed compared with the upwind. Changing between flying high and low during the runs downwind. They had mostly clean gybes with good control and execution. One gybe in this first run ended in a complete touch down, looking like they got too high on the foil into the turn resulting a crash.
The team made some inspections to the STB Foil and Rig set up during a drinks break, however there didn’t seem to be any concern. Then completed another upwind leg towards Coromandel Peninsular working on longer tacks, changing modes while sailing along. Seemed to be testing higher and lower flying heights and higher and lower angles to the wind. Boat was very locked in and looked good in the building sea state.
One more downwind leg into the harbour with some long legs again testing different heel angles and ride heights, in the now full wind against tide conditions.
