Update
When they were up they were up, and when they were down they were down… New Imocas should enjoy a smoother ride than their stop-start predecessors, but this shot of Paul Meilhat’s Biotherm shows they’re not there yet… though Meilhat lacked time before The Ocean Race with his new boat to calibrate key inputs like foil incidence. He will improve as the race goes on. But it’s not just the boat that is new, asked on race day how many hours he had had training with a full crew, the French skipper was very succinct: ‘no hours’
component it is such a balance. The platform needs to be well conceived and aggressive in design but reliable. Even as I write the words it is obvious and something that I continually bang on about, but it is a real lesson learnt. Examples are plentiful; when you look at Oracle in 2013, ETNZ in 2017, and again in 2021. Both 2013 and 2021 are great examples of the Defender getting faster and faster through the Match. The design was always fast enough, it just needed to be developed while racing. The key side of this statement is that it needed to be fast at the appropriate time. You won’t mag- ically develop a slow feature into being fast, so best to give thecom- ponent the proper amount of design time. There’s the contradiction! Sailing team development: in theory we are supposed to have
some America’s Cup World Series events. At this writing there is rumour of an event late-September but per the protocol the teams are supposed to be informed six months out. By calendar it could be no earlier than 12 September. So we will see what happens on the racing front. I will remain optimistic that the Defender will get something organised in a manner that is efficient and cost-effective. Outside its design role the AC40 will be a great in-house racing
tool. We can’t hide from the fact that we did not race that well in AC36 once the main event started. I would expect our team will be good and bloodied by the time racing starts. Nothing like a bit of young guys with something to prove racing against Goodie and Tom to get the blood flowing. The practice racing needs to be competitive to make sure we don’t have mental mistakes. A lot of learning to understand how to keep the races close when behind and the subtleties of the pre-start manoeuvring. Other happenings: the first part of this entry started on Chase
2ripping around Pensacola Bay. Listening and watching the learnings onboard as chase boat captain Dusty tacks back and forth. It is a different cycle for sure and is taking some getting used too. Learning from the chase is a different type of learning and yet
the subtlety of supporting the sailing still involves a lot of listening. You can see the experience of exceptionally talented helmsmen. You can see the younger guys getting better and better and that evolution is critical to our success. We won’t win if the entire team does not learn at the same rate. This is where the AC40 is going to pay massive dividends. I will continue to employ the strategy of two eyes, two ears, one
mouth, aka the five-second rule, and support the sailors in the development. Standing by on Tradewind Air getting ready to chute the gap on the descent into St Barts, sweaty palms engaged!
ALL THE PEOPLE (ALL THE TIME) Thanks for the invite to renew my certificate. But I do not wish for my IRC certificate funds to be used to support this (Seahorse) magazine. It is sexist and puts back equality in sailing with every issue. It systematically preferences male sailors, designers, editors and writers. More often than not the only photos of women sailors you will find within its pages are
16 SEAHORSE
models in bikinis in the front of powerboat ads (sic). I feel this magazine should not be funded or supported
through sharing by any sport-equity focused organisation. Seahorse’s deplorable editorial policies are not new and
many sailors, including members and the leadership of RORC, are well aware of the issue. Kind regards Cressida Robson
THE CHECCO – Carlos Pich We spoke to Francesco Bruni, co-skipper of the Italian Prada Luna Rossa team, to find out how the Italian team, finalists in the last America’s Cup in Auckland, are preparing. Born in Palermo 50 years ago, Francesco has an enviable track
record. He has participated in five editions of the America’s Cup, always with Luna Rossa except in Bermuda, where he joined the Swedish Artemis team when the Italian team was absent. A three- time Olympian in different classes, Laser (1996), 49er (2000) and Star (2004), he can also claim seven world championships, five European and 20 Italian titles. In the 2021 America’s Cup he shared steering duties on Luna Rossa with Jimmy Spithill, an unprecedented solution that other teams will probably copy in Barcelona 2024. Seahorse: How are the training sessions going in Cagliari? Francesco Bruni: Well! Cagliari is a good venue and although in winter you cannot sail every day we have plenty of time on the water. We are doing a good job testing different things, foils, rudders, sails and so on. We are making continuous small modifications that we immediately test on the water – we test each idea over several days to be sure of the results; some work better than others, but we always take a step forward. In this sense the most notable setback was the breakage of the test-boat mast. SH: How did this setback affect you? FB: The boat was unable to sail for a long time and the testing programme we had planned was delayed by two weeks. When these things happen the important thing is to use this time to work more in another way, and that’s what we did. While the mast was being repaired we carried out other work on the boat and just tried to use the time productively. SH: What about the twin-helm system, is it still developing? FB:Sharing the helm with Jimmy [Spithill], one on each tack, worked well from the start. The most important thing that has changed now is that we have two other guys who alternate with us and from time to time they also drive the boat. One is Tokyo 2020 Nacra 17 Olympic champion Ruggero Tita, the other one is our brilliant – still very young – three-time Optimist world champion Marco Gradoni, who in all probability will be our team’s skipper in the Youth America’s Cup. It’s going perfectly for us because sometimes Jimmy or I can’t
sail and having one of them replace one of us allows us not to lose any sailing days. We are very happy with them. In addition, it is very interesting to have other people contribute their point of view. Even
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100 |
Page 101 |
Page 102 |
Page 103 |
Page 104 |
Page 105 |
Page 106 |
Page 107 |
Page 108 |
Page 109 |
Page 110 |
Page 111 |
Page 112 |
Page 113 |
Page 114 |
Page 115 |
Page 116 |
Page 117 |
Page 118 |
Page 119 |
Page 120 |
Page 121
