It was wet. It was wild. But it was a terrific way to sign off on another positive week of testing for the NYYC American Magic team who are really starting to press the pedal to the floor on their campaign to win the Louis Vuitton 37th America’s Cup.
What greeted the sailors today was a really ‘messy’ south-easterly sea-state with wind induced chop coming from all angles and a wave height that at times neared 1.5 metres as the afternoon progressed. Sensibly in those conditions, the team opted to tow up to the airport area south of the Port Vell harbour entrance and near the commercial docks where often flatter water can be found…but not today!
The Americans opted for a one-boat ‘Magic’ sail-testing day with ‘America’ staying in the shed and with the helms on rotation between Tom Slingsby, Lucas Calabrese and Harry Melges, the boat was tricked up with LiDar cameras capturing sail shape whilst a drone buzzed in the sky. The sails themselves looked to be the suit that ‘America’ was sporting yesterday with the new mainsheet fairing at the clew and as the wind increased to around 14-16 knots mid-afternoon what we saw was a combination of board-flat jib and all the power in the mainsail being generated in the lower third with a lot of depth induced to keep the boat going through the waves.
Ride height was super-low, probably more for caution than speed, with the smaller form of the AC40 being very tricky to keep going through troughs. On balance the on-water recon team reported quite incredible boat-handling today from this, the team that many are picking to win the Louis Vuitton Cup and get to the Louis Vuitton 37th America’s Cup Match itself. Time will tell on that but for sure, they have some of the standout sailors and Flight Controllers/Trimmers of this generation.
Speaking afterwards, helmsman Lucas Calabrese summed up the day saying: “It was very messy state so yeah it was really, really, rough but it was good to kind of get our minds around the techniques needed in those conditions and it’s good to be out there in those conditions…it was just so rough today…so was mostly just trying to keep the boat upright and sailing really.”
Talking about the challenging sea-state, Lucas added: “I think it’s good to push the limits, obviously in the small boats the sea state scales differently so you know we have one metre waves it transfers to a much higher wave for the AC75 but still good to be out there and pushing the limits and I think we got good learnings out of today.”
With the team still operating the asymmetric foil set-up with an LEQ12 foil on the starboard arm, the sailors had to be super-accurate all afternoon. Lucas commented on the differences saying: “Definitely the one design foil is meant to be quite forgiving and it’s a bigger area so potentially sometimes a little easier to sail on that foil and the other one just a little twitchier and it’s just more propense to having different unstable moments let’s say, it’s just a little bit harder to sail on that foil.”
Interesting comment because on port tack, upwind, they looked more comfortable on the starboard foil and able to get a little more ride height to get over the waves. On starboard, facing into the waves it was a case of hanging on, dialling low and accepting the fire-hydrants of spray that barrelled down the boat.
Great session from NYYC American Magic. Plenty of take-aways and they go into a well-deserved weekend break before getting back out on Monday, weather permitting. (Magnus Wheatley)
On-Water Recon Report – NYYC American Magic: American Magic Team boat AC40-8 ‘Magic rolled out at 9:20 this morning. The boat was prepared and craned into the water by 10:00. When alongside, sailors and engineers made some regular checks to be sure everything was in top condition before the sailing session. Mention that Magic had a LiDar installed in starboard side today and all the sails that the crew carried to the chase boat seemed to be quite new.
At 11:00 Magic docked-out, towed by the chase boat, they hoisted up the mainsail once out from the harbour and, as there was no wind close to the harbour, the chase boat towed Magic 1.5 miles offshore in front the commercial port of Barcelona. There they found around 8 to 11 knots from 230-240º wind direction and a rough sea with waves that seemed to come from everywhere (SE direction after checking Barcelona buoy data).
The mainsail had a kind of half circle surface extension in between the clew and the end of the batten set at 1.6 m (approximately) from the bottom of the sail. From here the sailing session was conducted as follows:
Stint 1 (11:44 to 13:00): One of the chase boats set two marks with the intention to be used as a start-line at some point of the sailing session or as a leeward gate. Magic hoisted up a J2 jib and start sailing upwind on port tack. They sailed along two intense laps of upwind / downwind and, despite the sea conditions, they showed up with plenty of tacks and gybes and great boat-handling. After luffing at the leeward gate into portside tack, they stopped and changed the LiDar from starboard to port side (@12:30).
Then after that they proceed with two laps more keeping their sailing pretty active with a lot of manoeuvres and stopped after luffing at the leeward gate into portside tack, same as before. They installed this time the LiDar on both sides and went for one lap more performing three tacks going upwind and three gybes when going downwind. At this point the wind had increased to 12-16 knots from the same direction 230-240º.
Stint 2 (13.00 to 14.42): The team changed jib J2 for jib J3 and they also changed the batteries. For the second stint they proceed with two starts. On both ones Magic got into the box and quickly went to position itself to the right side of the box (towards the wind) and started with full speed close to the pin end on the first start and in the second started by the middle of the line and quickly tacked to simulate the right side of the course. After both starts, they performed a short upwind/downwind with a few tacks and gybes in between. The downwind after the second start was longer, they continued sailing after the leeward gate executing five gybes and then after luffed into an upwind and performed a couple of short upwind / downwind and stopped.
They held a short briefing and wished to proceed with some more starts but the wind suddenly dropped. At 14.42 h the chase boat towed the yacht back to harbour. Docking was completed at 15:30 h.
As a Summary American Magic Team today foiled for 105 minutes, performed around 75 manoeuvres: 77 % fully foiling. Jose Piñana AC Recon
