Bull roars again

Alinghi Red Bull Racing caught the eye with their MT1 mast replacing the MT2 that snapped but almost immediately they looked back into the swing of things, dropping and re-hoisting the jib several times to make adjustments before hitting a diamond shaped training course. Bear-aways looked to have no element of caution and if you didn’t know, you would have never guessed that the team had such a major incident just a few short days ago. Credit to the sailors. Resilient bunch.

More diamond courses followed and then the customary pre-starts to keep the eye in were performed and all round it was a solid performance over four hours that will have blown the cobwebs away and given the team a lot of confidence.

Speaking after sailing, Jack Taylor, the boat captain of BoatOne spoke about the day and the mood in the team: “The mood is keep on pushing. We got together after what happened on our previous sailing day, put our heads together and got BoatOne back out on the water today for a sort of a re-commissioning day.

“We’ve gone through it and we are still going through it, I’m sure we will be opening up about that fairly soon, but today it was all about re-commissioning the previous rig and we had a really good day out there with it.”

And Jack continued: “The focus on today was it was merely a re-commissioning of the boat as you could see we started with J2 we got to do some diamond practise moving into the J3 in the afternoon and got to finish with some race laps.

“We didn’t actually have too many close calls today like we have in previous days, but you know there’s positive vibes throughout the team and we’re happy with our progression and will continue to keep going forward.”

A brilliant effort from the team who will be back sailing again on Wednesday this week.

For Luna Rossa Prada Pirelli, it was a slightly shorter session than planned with rudder issues again looking to be a problem but over the course of some four and a half hours it was a productive session looking at jib cross-overs between the J1.5 and the J2-7 which will have been gold-dust for the analysts.

Max Sirena gave a wide-ranging interview after sailing and is clearly keeping the pressure on for more performance, saying: “Well everyday we’re spending on the water that is gold for us now because at the end the only thing you cannot buy is the time, so we need to use the next couple of months as much as possible to try to be as race ready possible but in the meantime keep going with the development process.

“We still have a lot to go, a lot to do, and even what you see on the water is a little bit of a mix in terms of testing, racing, start, and so on, so it’s an ongoing process which will go until day one.”

Asked to comment on the assertion from Grant Dalton, CEO of Emirates Team New Zealand that he thought Luna Rossa were ahead of the other Challengers, Max responded: “I think it’s hard to tell where you are compared to the other teams, I mean the fact you are not able to line up, yes sometime we are doing some crossing tacks but when we are doing that you’re doing like a 10 mile beat so it’s almost impossible to get any feedback in terms of performance. I think everyone is pushing really hard and I mean look Alinghi (Red Bull Racing) after the big day they had couple days ago they were back in the water so good for them, everyone is pushing really hard and I think you will know where you are the day you will be able to line-up against another team inside of the racecourse because there is a quite a big difference to race, the boundary and so on, to compare in open water.”

Max was then asked about the differences between this campaign and previous campaigns: “There is not really much different. The main difference is the fact we know a little bit more about this new class, we’re on the Generation 3 of the boat, obviously the core group of the team is identical, we just added where we felt we were missing something from the last campaign, so I mean at the end the goal of everyone here from starting from the kitchen to the guys sailing the boat is to try to win the Cup, so everyone is pushing really hard to try to achieve that because at the end I mean that’s a good dream to realise.”

The prize for the most dramatic incident was awarded to Orient Express Racing Team who had been enjoying almost certainly their most polished performance on the water to date. The boat looked rock solid in flight with great variance on pitch and heel angles, but all superbly controlled. However, whilst pushing it hard downwind towards the middle of afternoon, something on the control panel let go and immediately the AC75 was into a nose-dive that very much signalled the end of the day.

Jason Saunders, the ace Kiwi trimmer and flight controller commented afterwards: “We had a problem, not sure exactly what, with one of the controls on the starboard side which is why we had the nosedive, and then afterwards we were unable to figure out exactly how to fix it so yeah that was the end of the session unfortunately but we had some good sailing today as well already before that so you know we’re getting slowly more reliable and these are such complex boats we’re always going to have some problems to start with and the guys are working through it the best we can.”

And Jason continued: “So really nice conditions today, pretty flat water for Barcelona so you could see all the boats ripping around, it was beautiful sailing. The goal today was to try and test out some modes sailing the boat, just varying different cant angles and the way we’re sailing the boat, and then at the end we were hoping to do some more manoeuvres and we sort of go up and down and test all the manoeuvres out in the playbook.”

Asked about how the team responded to the Alinghi Red Bull Racing mast failure, Jason added: “Yeah we looked at it and it was pretty scary to see. We’re happy they’re all okay but then it was a wake-up call for everyone so we’ve certainly been discussing how to avoid any such issues and make sure our technique’s good for the strong wind bear-aways.”

A good day for the French who are still very much in the commissioning phase with their AC75 but getting stronger and stronger with every session. Another six hours on the water today. They’re committed, that’s for sure.

For INEOS Britannia it was an eventful afternoon of more than five hours of sailing with the British Challenger of Record really starting to concentrate on the details. A new J2-2 was revealed today with a shorter luff than we’ve seen before that required an extension to the innovative carbon rods that the team are using instead of standard halyards.

A game changer in terms of precision but later in the afternoon, whilst sailing on the J3-1, the team managed to rip it “from luff to leech in a dying breeze” according to the observing recon team.

INEOS Britannia spent most of the latter part of the session filing through pre-starts – five in total – and we’re starting to see the manoeuvrability and power of this impressive AC75 that is very different to all the others. Winding up on the line, the power they can lay down is extraordinary and with Sir Ben Ainslie and Giles Scott pushing hard, it was another impressive performance from the team.

One interesting point of the day was after the second stint of pre-start practice where Ainslie, Scott, Luke Parkinson and Leigh McMillan all got together on the main Chase Boat to de-brief tactics and boat handling. Good to see, this is where the improvements come and performance is everything with this exciting team.

Speaking afterwards Matt Rossiter, one of the super-fit rowers drafted in from the British Olympic team and now a Cyclor for INEOS Britannia, summed up the day saying: “I think we had a pretty good day. We had a few jib changes throughout, I think it was a good day, we got lots of stuff done, working through a few things as all the teams out here are, but yeah I think, all in all, a good day.”

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