Left: pushing it out there… during this Volvo Race the onboard reporters have become more confident about pushing their drones further away from the boat and launching in stronger winds. VO65 Mapfre is caught here crossing a current line on leg 8 to Newport. Above: the custom drones developed by Nick Bowers for Team New Zealand can remain steady and under the complete control of the pilot at speeds close to twice what is possible with off-the-shelf equipment. As more and more is revealed about the shrewd ways in which ETNZ used their less plentiful resources to win the 35th America’s Cup the more impressive the whole story becomes
the ETNZ skipper and sailing director, while I was filming the 2015 A Cat Worlds in Punta Ala, and soon after I was on the ETNZ Cup programme for 2017. ‘In New Zealand I had two brand new
prototypes of my design and I ran those the entire campaign. With the AC50 going upwind at full speed at the upper wind limit I could still out-pace the boat, no problem. We ran the drone programme every sailing day – the guys were very generous with the latitude they gave me to experiment with fast drone use, even in the highest winds when it took a while to get everything settled down enough for design development work. I also ran all the cameras on the test and raceboats which made co-ordination smoother. ‘I operated my own shot list for the
most part, based upon the team’s goals for that particular day. Once ashore I would later deliver appropriate footage which I uploaded onto the ETNZ servers.’ Ashby understands development classes.
With 15 multihull world champion ships and now two America’s Cup campaigns under his belt, he is set to embark on his first America’s Cup defence. He is com- pletely clear about how high-quality drone usage benefits different aspects of the Team New Zealand programme. ‘Nick [Bowers] and I talked at the end of
the 2015 A Cat Worlds. His aerial drone footage was accurate and steady, footage you simply can’t get by any other method. I realised we could utilise some of that same style of footage for developing and learning about the AC50 rig and platform. ‘As you know we were pretty strapped resource and budget-wise when we first
went on the water with our test boat. We didn’t have money for coaches or even performance analysts at that time but we thought that if Nick could work for the sailing and design teams, and also help our marketing with some good output, then he could cover a lot of bases… ‘The footage we had was outstanding in
terms of quality and accuracy and proved invaluable for the designers and the sailing team. For instance, for the designers you could constantly be monitoring how the wing and the jib interacted. You could look at the jib sheeting positions. You could look at the overall platform yaw as it sailed through the water to enable you to adjust your daggerboard set-up and your rudder set-ups to suit. ‘For us onboard setting up the boat and
then getting used to how the boat was feeling, it was really good to be able to see the same thing from that external view. ‘For me as the wing trimmer it was
great. After sailing I could go back and sit down with the wing design team to go through how we were wanting to set up the wing onboard, referencing that conver- sation directly to how our twist control was working that day, with the different cambers and overall profiles and what we
I have been asked not to speak to you about drones
– Victor Kovalenko, head coach, Australian Olympic Sailing
No comment – Mark Robinson, Team GBR
were looking at achieving. It was really a fantastic way to check in – we were almost at a point of being able to validate what we were doing from a frictional resistance and velocity prediction viewpoint. ‘Then as the design was pinned down it
became another string to the bow for the tuning of the boat before we left for Bermuda. It really sped up the whole learning process which in our case was pretty critical. ‘Sailing team-wise, we were also thin on
the ground. At that time Pete [Burling] and Blair [Tuke] were doing their Rio Olympic campaign and Ray Davies, who ultimately became the main performance coach, along with Richard Meacham, the plat- form co-ordinator and I were all on the boat doing a huge amount of the sailing and testing. The drone footage that Nick reliably delivered to us day in day out was a massive help as we simply didn’t have the resources and the personnel to be over everything in real time. ‘To start with we were able to look at
the boat going through the water from different angles, analyse platform rotation and heel and trim both fore and aft and sideways, the rig twist, everything really… To be able to see the boat sailing from that outside perspective, particularly from an elevated view, really gave you a good appreciation of how it looked globally; we would then pick out things that weren’t quite right and you could also of course see what looked good. ‘When you watched the vision material
you’d sit there saying things like, “Ahhh, that all makes sense”. That quickly gives you confirmation that you are on the right
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