Update
191 DAYS! – Terry Hutchinson That’s how long it is to the start of the Louis Vuitton challenger series. Sounds like a lot of time but from here it feels tight! At American Magic we are three weeks into a two-boat sail development pro- gramme that is all-consuming. We have the two AC40s which provide a great baseline for sail shapes, concepts and technique. How has two-boat testing changed? 2007… uuffff, that is a long
time ago! By the AC32 cycle the V5 ACC yacht was pretty well refined yet there was still an impressive amount of development going on. Things like jumper-less rigs, twisting hulls, mainsail cambers, and new ways to measure the boat… all led to performance gains. In 2007 a big day would be 55 miles, most of which was defined
by upwind testing; an eight-minute test with a side swap would constitute a test. Looking for a fraction of a fraction of a knot. Within Team New Zealand almost all the emphasis was put on winning the first cross and leading at the top mark. So much so that testing upwind, though sometimes followed by some downwind stuff, just as often led to a tow and lunch. On average it was a six-hour day, day in and day out. Then a maintenance day to debrief and learn. Fast forward to 2024 and AC40 two-boat development. In the
past week of sailing we trained three of the five days, averaging 85 miles a day over three hours of sailing. Each test includes a side swap but does not go for the full duration of eight minutes. The speed and efficiency of the boat allow for a quicker assessment and learning. The data coming ashore is well beyond what we ever had on a
Version 5 yacht. But three hours of pure yachting take 4½ hours to complete and so the days look similar. The differences come in the sailors’ ability to talk and take notes on the day. The boats are intense and require a high level of focus to sail well. Our ability to post-process the data and draw conclusions requires
a higher level of science. Trusting the data and wind solution is para- mount to understanding good or bad performance. Not uncommon to any two-boat testing but with apparent wind speed averaging 45-50kt upwind and down it is trickier. I can still see where we potentially sail too much and don’t take the perfect amount of time to capture every point. Yet the sailors
14 SEAHORSE
want to push on as inevitably there are a lot of different ways to skin this cat. Understanding the correct settings that get you to consistent set-up happens on and off the water. The gain rate is impressive; truly ‘a life in the fast lane’ period! Other happenings: ETNZ, Alinghi, Luna Rossa, Ineos, Alinghi and
Orient Express all gave their two months’ notice of launching their AC75 race yacht. I would suspect by the time this is published American Magic will have followed suit. Receiving these notices is just another reminder that we could use twice the 191 days left. Exciting and nerve wracking all at the same time. For certain we are looking forward to seeing what the others have
produced. In the same breath we have a couple of big months in front of us as we wait for B3 to arrive. Mother nature is delivering in spades here in Barcelona with great southwest breeze and reasonably warm weather. Two-boating may have changed in look and speed but I am continually impressed by the rate of learning and the fact that we always have more questions than answers! Standing by, 17 February, Barcelona, Spain
NEARLY THERE – Jack Griffin By the end of April half the new AC75s will be sailing. The Kiwis will launch in Auckland and be keen to dive into testing their new systems. They will begin capturing data to feed into their simulator, comparing physical world results with virtual world predictions. And of course the sailors will be thrilled to have a new weapon and to start to learn how to sail it. They will no doubt have had many hours on the sim- ulator, but nothing beats being on the water. One complication for ETNZ is obviously the 47-day transit time to get their yacht to Barcelona. That trip includes transiting the Red Sea and the Suez Canal. Let’s hope their AC75 makes the journey safely and on time. Luna Rossa will launch in Cagliari. The Italians have hinted that
they will have a radical boat. They certainly led the way with radical ideas in 2021. Everyone has now copied their two-helmsmen con- figuration. Their clever under-deck ‘boom’ has also inspired a lot of clever thinking by the other teams in this cycle. Their LEQ-12 test boat continues to serve them well. It provided validation of design
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