News Around the World


against each other and then claimed a point each by crossing the startline alone in ‘ghost races’ against the absent Americans. Basking in its perfect score, the British team could hurry back


to the drawing board and work on further improvements, while the Italian and patched-up American boats met in the semi-final to duke it out for the remaining finals spot. Now the narrative switched to redemption. Would the Americans


emulate the British rise from the ashes and return to fight again? The short answer was no. Thanks to the monumental efforts of the shore team, they did return, but there was little evidence of much fight. ‘It looks like they are just delivering the boat around the course,’ said Nathan Outteridge from the commentary box. ‘They are in a race against themselves at the moment.’ Although helmsman Dean Barker declared full confidence in the


boat, he indeed looked to be fighting it all the way. Wedged in his cockpit, his shoulders up around his ears and his face drawn in a taut grimace, he wrestled with the juddering wheel – like a runaway truck across a ploughed field. As he struggled and sometimes failed to maintain rudder grip, he was frequently heard groaning with effort and frustration – aaargh! It was uncomfortable to watch. With the course configuration back to upwind starts, the classic


match race requirement to win the pre-start is back in play. As a world champion match racer, Barker knows well that 85 per cent of match races are won at the start, yet the American starts lacked aggression or even much engagement. ‘Tentative’ is how commen- tator Ken Read described them. Another respected US skipper was less kind: ‘In all four races


Barker was heading away from the line with 60 seconds to go… He looked fried.’ In fairness much of this was after the crash and probably related


to gremlins with the control systems, but the signs and the damning pre-start statistics were already evident much earlier. Another Cup article of faith is develop or go home. But change


does not always equate to improvement. Some observers felt that in the period over Christmas, when all the boats were modified in the search for more speed, the US team took a step back. For example, a so-called batwing mainsail, which promised to produce the same power with less drag, was much criticised. Hutchinson conceded it was ‘hard to quantify’ whether all their


modifications lived up to expectation. ‘I am not sure we gave Patriot the fair shake she deserved.’ In a revolutionary new class it was logical that much attention


focused on the technical issues of extracting maximum performance from the designs: the fastest boat always wins the America’s Cup. But fundamental sailing skills are also vital and once they had


their boat working – not faster, but at least competitive – Ainslie’s crew consistently demonstrated slicker, more polished work than the other teams, nailing the starts and sailing smart around the track. In the most epic battle of the Prada Cup series through January the British crew slugged it out against Luna Rossa in a real match race thriller involving nine lead changes – and won. Ainslie, who told an interviewer that, given the opportunity, he would


probably trade his five Olympic medals for the America’s Cup, is always a dangerous competitor. Witness how he came into the SailGP league at the beginning of last year as a rookie and promptly won four of the five fleet races and the match race final to take the Sydney title against teams with a whole season of racing behind them. In preparing for this America’s Cup programme Ainslie built a strong


brains trust around him. The British were the only team to invest in a dedicated tactician at the expense of a grinder, a tricky calculation given the power demands of these boats. However, the constant stream of communication between Ainslie, tactician Giles Scott and mainsail trimmer Bleddyn Môn became a much admired model. Luna Rossa, with its double helmsman set-up between Jimmy


Spithill and Francesco Bruni, took note and initiated a ‘small rev- olution’, giving a more heads-up role to mainsail trimmer Pietro Sibello. ‘The boat is going better and better,’ said Bruni. ‘We have improved every department, including communication and tactics.’ The American boat had skipper Hutchinson as the designated


28 SEAHORSE


tactician, but he was mostly head down on the grinding pedestal. Notwithstanding Goodison’s pre-capsize warning, the American boat was largely silent with Barker having to solve the tactical puzzle alone. Speed may be king but, as American Magic’s fate demonstrated,


speed without control and without tactical domination right from the pre-start, is no guarantee of victory. ‘We measure ourselves by results,’ said a rueful Hutchinson. ‘We didn’t do the job we set ourselves. We will debrief and figure out what we need to do to get to perfection.’ Ivor Wilkins


AUSTRALIA Fences in the paddock If you had a clean sheet of paper to pick an America’s Cup dream team Glenn Ashby would be one of the first to be inked on your list. His technical grasp has depth and breadth, backed up by outstand- ing talent on the water, particularly in the highly competitive foiling A-Class. Just before the American Magic capsize he spoke to Blue Robinson about the AC75 rule Seahorse: Who was in the design group who created the final AC75 rule? Glenn Ashby: The group started with around eight of us working with the concept, which then grew out to 10 of us writing the rule, all from different departments… rig, hull, foils. In the early stage there were probably six or seven concepts on the table just after our win in Bermuda, and that was reduced to two. The fully foiling high-performance version emerged from that. Looking at a list of 10 boxes we wanted to tick, I think we got most of them. SH: You could have gone conservative but chose not to, really pushing this rule. Was it ever a 50-50 call, or was it always going to be extreme? GA: With all the concepts we were looking for good performance, and we figured that we were either hard in the high-performance pathway, or we were hard in the opposite corner in a full-displace- ment monohull. Anything that was in the middle, semi-foiling or part thereof, had good performance in some conditions up or downwind, but less so in other conditions or angles of sail. So we felt if you were going to do it then embracing it wholeheartedly was the answer for the best performance. The Challenger of Record Luna Rossa saw our vision, where we


thought the future of America’s Cup boats was heading, and it wasn’t long after they saw our concept – and then had a go on the simulator – that they began to believe our predicted numbers. Then it became quite clear to them what an exciting concept this was. When Dan Bernasconi, Kevin Shoebridge and myself headed


over to Milan to sit with the Luna Rossa team we thought we would present it to them and discuss it for two or three days, and we literally had an agreement after 40 minutes! They fully understood we were making something special here, and so we got back on the flight that night to head back to New Zealand! SH: This rule had to work. I am reminded of the Volvo 70 rule, which is now a fantastic boat, but it took time and multiple setbacks to get it right… you didn’t have that luxury. GA: Absolutely, we didn’t. And, yes, hindsight is a great thing. But I believe very strongly that 95 per cent of the concept has worked extremely well, and I think all the teams have been super-impressed with the performance of the boats. Just talking to the sailors, mate, they are all blown away on how well these boats sail. But it has also been an incredible challenge for the designers and engineers, and we feel very pleased at ETNZ that this has worked out so well. We wanted to push the boundaries in design and engineering, we wanted great manoeuvrability, we wanted close boat-on-boat interaction in the pre-start at extremely high speeds… I can tell you it is phen - omenal to be part of it. SH:How much of the rule did you have to beef up, knowing engineers would always go as light as they could? GA: The rule was excellent in defining minimum structures and weights. It is not so extreme that we are risking breaking things.


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