Mediterranean springtime conditions with glistening waters and a solid 15-17 knots of breeze are just about the picture-perfect conditions for the new generation of AC75 yachts to show the world just what they’ve got in terms of sheer pace and power. In Barcelona today it was epic sailing for INEOS Britannia. Bottle it, this was pure gold.
The story of the day however, and one that has really set tongues wagging in Barcelona is 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 is 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. Ben 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.
Speaking afterwards, Will Bakewell, the affable Test and Validation Team Leader for INEOS Britannia summed up the approach that the team have taken over the first few days with RB3 saying: “I guess a bit slow for the first couple of days, new yacht, this is our first effort in this rule with the AC75 so there’s been some work-ups on that side that we’ve got to get right but we’ve taken a really sort of steady approach I guess in working that boat up but it was nice to give the sailors the boat today to actually go sailing so yeah pretty cool.”
Talking about whether RB3 was at its maximum today and when we will see that potential at its fullest, Will’s 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…It depends on the conditions, we’ve got a load of aims testing stuff in the background, making sure that we’ve made the right decisions in the design and that sort of thing so it’s a bit of a balance but I guess we’ve got to be fastest in about however many months’ time, if we’re fastest in the first race that’s the good time to get all of the performance out of it.”
When asked about just how technical RB3 is, Will offered an insightful answer, saying: “What’s quite interesting is we had a quite technical test boat, so actually in comparison it is still very technical but actually in terms of the things we’re trying to measure on this we’ve toned that down a bit in the name of performance. So, in some respects it’s less technical than our test boat but there are also the new challenges there in terms of having cyclors on there and drivetrains and all the different control strategies we’re now trying to do.”
INEOS Britannia looked more than good on the crystal waters of Barcelona today and there’s plenty more to come over the coming weeks as they tap into the platform and deliver increasing performance. Shoreside, the team looked collected and happy. They just set a big performance marker and everyone’s watching.
