News Around the World Performance, though, has been telegraphed from afar. Ten years
or more in the America’s Cup and it’s very much the standard appren- ticeship served by teams in this era. Bleddyn knows the game: ‘As campaigns go by you’re constantly learning and trying to improve for the future. I think we’ve done a good job as a team taking that learning from the Bermuda campaign initially, and then the last America’s Cup in Auckland 2021; I think what’s super-important for getting success in an America’s Cup team is that you learn from your weaknesses in previous cycles while also being able to continue to improve on the strengths. ‘Personally it’s a dream come true for me to be able to do this
as a job and race these absolutely phenomenal bits of kit, and as an engineer to do this working closely with a group like Mercedes F1. I feel very fortunate to be part of this team so we’re going to knuckle down in the next couple of weeks and hopefully we’ll see the Cup coming home…’ You already know the answer to whether that happened. The
America’s Cup: the hope that kills. Magnus Wheatley
their own in-house weather programmes while also rapidly transitioning from data collection based on weather balloons and thousands of hours of live on-water observations. Team New Zealand largely relied on this old-school method to
win the America’s Cup in San Diego in 1995 and defend it in Auckland in 2000. Its then meteorologist, American Bob Rice, confessed: ‘I am a dinosaur fast becoming a fossil. I have a sub- jective feel about this stuff. I don’t rely on numbers or computers…’ Across at Alinghi, Bilger, who never trained as a meteorologist,
was fully committed to the numbers and computers route. ‘We relied mainly on an Australian system from the CSIRO, which had devel- oped a very accurate model over 20 years,’ he says. ‘We ran that model to a high resolution in Auckland and again in Valencia. And we soon realised that most meteorological teams were still relying on low-resolution models.’ Recognising a business opportunity, Bilger set about creating an
early app to make all this technology available to the public in user- friendly format. That simply-stated objective turned out to be a lot more challenging than anticipated, but PredictWind was born. ‘Basi- cally all the models work the same way,’ he explains. ‘They start with an Initial Conditions file, which is made up mainly from satellite data, ship observations, land-based stations, along with atmospheric recordings from the earth’s surface up to the upper atmosphere. ‘This information is fed into the various models, which divide the
world up into 60x60km or 25x25km cubes. Then there is a European model with amazing computing power that goes down to 9x9km resolution. Through a series of very complicated physical equations the respective models then interpret the data and produce a forecast for each cube.’ PredictWind continues to use CSIRO as its primary model but
also displays forecast data from five other models on its app. But by installing its own weather stations, drawing information from a worldwide network of tens of thousands of community-based sources – yacht clubs, fishing fleets, marinas, surf spots, anything that records and provides open-source weather data – the company has now narrowed the forecast focus to an astonishing 1x1km resolution, also taking account of local geographic features. Preparing for Barcelona, PredictWind placed five weather stations
Alinghi powering to windward in 2003 in the Hauraki Gulf in the penultimate America’s Cup to be held in ACC V5 monohulls. The swoop by Alinghi founder Ernesto Bertarelli following the 2000 Match to secure key players for his successful challenge in 2003 was not just about key sailors like Coutts and Butterworth, but went further to also recruit crucial behind-the-scenes operatives including Team NZ met man and former AC navigator Jon Bilger
NEW ZEALAND When all is said and done – after all the meticulous analysis, design, talent, technology and training – an America’s Cup campaign, like any other sailing endeavour, can rise or fall at the capricious mercy of the weather. From the moment Barcelona was announced as the venue for the 37th America’s Cup the local weather conditions for late August to late October 2024 came under intense scrutiny… with the caveat, as PredictWind CEO Jon Bilger expressed it, that, no matter how much we try to see into the future, ‘the weather is always the weather’. Notwithstanding science, sophisticated data collection and
massive computing power, the weather can always defy expectation and precedent. ‘The weather’s never like this’ is a refrain familiar to every regatta sailor in the world. PredictWind has close connections with the Cup. It was official
weather provider for the America’s Cup regatta in Auckland in 2021 and has continued that relationship through to Barcelona 2024. In fact, the company traces its genesis nearly two decades ago to the America’s Cup. Bilger, who sailed for New Zealand at the 1992 Olympic Games and served as navigator for Chris Dickson’s 1995 America’s Cup campaign in San Diego, was recruited to manage the Alinghi weather programme for the Swiss team’s 2003 Cup debut in Auckland and its subsequent successful defence in Valencia in 2007. This was still the era when teams devoted huge resources to
26 SEAHORSE
and two webcams in the race area that will help inform its own fore- casting, but also provide real-time datagrams to the teams. ‘The teams will have Application Interfaces, which will overlay the weather information on their performance systems,’ says Bilger. ‘Of course, the teams have their own meteorologists so they will also be interpreting data and making their own strategic calls.’ A much discussed Barcelona feature is that wave heights are
generally higher than the predominantly flat-water conditions of Auckland, where the foiling AC75s made their debut. But the tricky part is that the wave direction in Barcelona seldom aligns with the wind direction. So a wave buoy has been placed in the course area to provide live detail on the prevailing conditions. Cup fans could keep track of the weather via
americascup.com,
where a PredictWind weather page brings up an eight-day outlook, a daily synopsis and an animated chart of the Barcelona course area with a weather overlay at that remarkable 1km resolution. While yacht racing always relies on seeking out the favoured wind
direction and strength around the track, the high-speed nature of foiling has shifted the emphasis. Instead of tacking or gybing on every shift the game is generally more about racing to the course boundaries and reducing manoeuvres. ‘The days of picking your way up a three-mile beat of 35 minutes are long gone,’ says Bilger. ‘Now it is more about selecting the appropriate equipment for the expected conditions and chasing the pressure.’ And selecting the appropriate equipment goes right back to the
start of the process. Each team’s equipment package will be pitched to its autumn weather expectations for an area of about half a square nautical mile off Barcelona’s manmade Barcelonese Beach! In making their decisions they would have done well to remember the cautionary experience Team New Zealand suffered in 2003 when it went all-in on a bet that the Auckland Match would conform
GILLES MARTIN-RAGET
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