As American Magic towed its AC75 Patriot to the racecourse on the afternoon of January 29, everyone with a hand and heart in the New York YC’s 36th America’s Cup campaign knew the situation was dire. They were already down two races to Luna Rossa Prada Pirelli in the best-of-seven Prada Cup semifinal eliminations, their beloved Patriot had been to hell and back, and the Italians were on a roll.

Cue the sporting cliches: chins high, game faces on, business as usual, one race at time. Win one and live to fight another day.

But no amount of positive spin from within the organization could change the fact that the boat was not the finely tuned racing machine it was before it capsized and sank on January 17. Gremlins were lurking inside Patriot’s dark blue hull, and so it was no surprise when the boat started acting up during pre-race warmup laps for Race 3 of the series. The American Magic support RIB pulled alongside and sent technicians through a watertight hatch in the deck to troubleshoot the boat’s foil-cant system. With the scheduled race start fast approaching, they emerged, sealed the hatch, and hoped for the best. Everyone on board knew the boat’s mechatronics weren’t right—not as right as they needed to be when facing an aggressive and confident opponent. Indeed, before Patriot even entered the starting box for Race 3 of the semis, fear of an FCS failure was very real. It would end the day, and the campaign.

“We all knew what the scorecard was,” says American Magic CEO, skipper and tactician Terry Hutchinson, and from the recon they’d done, they were confident Luna Rossa would be “very well-disciplined to their timings, and they were.”

The Italians, of course, were eager to put a swift end to the series and get on with the business of developing their boat for the Prada Cup finals against Ineos Team UK in mid-February, the last hurdle before the Cup Match. Race-management software hiccups that had been nagging Luna Rossa in earlier races were nonexistent. This time, they entered the starting box on port and on time.

“It was a strong right-side call,” Hutchinson says. “Plan A was to start right. Plan B was to be as tight to leeward as we could.”

With perfect timing and execution, however, the Italians denied Hutchinson Plan A.

“Still, we got a good start to leeward, got to the boundary, tacked, and the breeze went 9 degrees to the right.”

Luna Rossa starboard helmsman Jimmy Spithill stuck a perfect leebow tack, and within seconds of powering their sails, the Italians were higher and faster. The moment Luna Rossa’s port helmsman Francesco Bruni looked over his shoulder to see Patriot tacking away, he knew he had control of the race.

And that was the end of that.

Both entered the next start, Race 4, on time, but in the final windup, American Magic turned back too early, and the Italians sailed over the top of them, blitzing the port end of the starting line. The Americans tacked across the line and set up an early split, but with stronger winds now on the left side of the course, the Italians streaked away to an early lead once again. Luna Rossa commanded the first cross, but the Americans were quick, eating into their lead and pushing them hard, fueled by a heart-racing cocktail of hope and dogged determination.

“The way the beat was setting up, we were going to go around the correct gate at the top and bear away into a strong spot,” Hutchinson says.

But then, it happened. Nearing the top of the course, less than 10 seconds from tacking on the port layline, helmsman Dean Barker counted down: “Two, one, board down…board’s not going here…board won’t go down…ah.”

It did eventually go down after a few more frantic button pushes, but after threading their way back through the weather gate and forcing the foil down again in order to jibe, Hutchinson noted aloud over his headset: “The lights are flickering kinda funny.”

“We did have a backup system installed, and it was working properly because we had battery shutdowns earlier in the day,” Hutchinson says. But this one final foil-­control-system misfire wasn’t a battery issue, it was a command issue. “If you hit the button and it doesn’t take the command, then there’s a gremlin in the system. The gremlin gets sorted out only by having a technician hop on board to look at the data and solve the issue.”

They completed the race in the distant shadow of Luna Rossa, which made for an agonizing end to a brutally short campaign. The sudden ending to an effort with so much potential—a campaign cut short by one shocking and destructive sinking.

Hutchinson says it would be a gross simplification to point to the one final foil-control-system failure as the reason for the team’s early exit from the Prada Cup. It’s impossible, he says, not to connect it back to the capsize, and the obvious effects of putting the boat underwater for three hours. The brevity of the Prada Cup format is perhaps equally harsh. Three and a half years in the making, over and done in 10 races—without a single point in the win column. The word most often heard in post-race interviews was “potential.” American Magic, the top-ranked challenger going into the series, had plenty of it, and they were confident that they had a fast boat. But they never gave themselves the opportunity to prove it. They left more than just points on the racecourse—they left a multimillion-dollar campaign unfulfilled.

Once Patriot 2.0 was relaunched following the capsize and rebuild two days before the semifinals, they only had roughly six hours of sea trials, squashing gremlins the entire time. “We weren’t in the spot we wanted to be—and not through lack of effort,” Hutchinson says. For Race 1 of the semifinals, they had to shake off the capsize and get back into their race-day routine. They pulled off the dock on time, and it was blowing 24 to 28 knots when they got to the racecourse. “We sat there for an hour waiting to hoist because it was too windy. We couldn’t risk any further damage to the boat because of a battery shut-off or any one of the other issues we were facing.”

They’d mapped out their race strategy in the simulator that morning and felt confident going into the day’s first race. But that plan quickly unraveled.

“We entered in a 25-knot puff,” Hutchinson says. “It’s hard to turn the boat downwind when you’re going 51 knots. There was a lot going on, and we quickly got out of position. Luna Rossa is too good to put ourselves in a bad spot and not have them take advantage of it. And that’s what they did.”

In the following start, Race 2 of the series, he says, Patriot was in a good position in the first 20 seconds or so. “We came up behind them and went to tack to windward, but when we trimmed up, we couldn’t get the windward board out of the water…and that had an impact on the timing of the turn. When each position is mapped out almost to the second in the prestart, if there’s something that doesn’t go perfectly right, you end up late. We spotted them some distance, and they sailed away from us.”

They also had a case of the slows. In that evening’s debrief, Hutchinson says, they identified that they were sailing the boat at only 85 percent of what they normally would. “We should have been able to get the boat going properly, but the releases were going off on the hydraulics on the mainsheet and the cunningham. Everything is tuned to a certain pressure, and when you exceed that pressure, it releases so you don’t break anything. We kept running into releases on the mainsheet and certain things. We’ve sailed enough to know that when the boat is locked in, nothing is overloaded. And here it was overloading. [The boat] was cranky, and it was hard to sail.”

Patriot never behaved in this way before the capsize, an incident that has since been thoroughly dissected by the team and armchair experts around the world. American Magic mainsail trimmer Paul Goodison acknowledges that he would’ve preferred a different maneuver at the time but told reporter Ed Gorman that there’s no reason to second-guess what happens in the heat of the moment.

“I guess I felt that we had a big enough lead just to make things easy and get around the course. Dean obviously thought it was the right thing to do (tack/bear away) to keep racing and keep pushing and go the other way. If we had pulled off that maneuver, nothing would have ever been said about this. It’s just one of those things. Whether the campaign changed or moved because of those actions…”—Goodison pauses—”It is what it is, and that’s the past. There was no apportioning blame at one individual or a group of individuals, and what impressed me about all the sailing team is that nobody really mentioned it again. We had the debrief, we aired our thoughts, and then we just focused on getting back into racing and how we would get the boat around the course [in the semifinal].”

Reflecting on the day of the capsize, Hutchinson says, everyone inside the team was feeling the disappointment of being 0-3, but they were excited to race against Luna Rossa in a real breeze. “We did exactly what we thought we would do,” Hutchinson says. “We sailed away from them—because Patriot is a great boat.”

When American Magic rounded the ­leeward mark to start the final upwind leg of the race that fateful day, there was only 9 knots of wind blowing across the racecourse. A ­thunderstorm over the city was touching the bottom of the course, Hutchinson says, creating a big hole of no wind. “[Because of previous races,] we were pretty nervous about sailing into no wind and the associated risk of being in light air while the other guy is sailing at 18 knots. By the time we got about halfway up, it was up to 13 knots, and at about 20 seconds out from the mark, the breeze spiked to 18 and went really hard left. Ripping into the top mark at 45 knots…there’s a reasonable amount of hair on fire in those types of situations.”

Even after rewatching video of the maneuver ad nauseam, Hutchinson remains firm that the right maneuver was the same one they’d done on the previous leg: a tack and bear away. That one went smoothly in 16 knots of wind—just like they’d practiced—but as they turned past the mark and toward the finish, the wind spiked from 18 to 24 knots, and over she went after soaring through the air.

“We did a good job turning down, ­getting the board out of the water to create maximum stability, and committing to the turn—and that’s what you have to do,” Hutchinson says. “The one thing we didn’t expect was for the breeze to go to 24 knots in a three-second window.”

The team’s coach, James Lyne, watched the capsize from a chase boat. “The big thing with these boats is heel angle,” Lyne says. “You get to a certain heel angle, and you’re pretty much toast. If you come out of a maneuver relatively slow, the heel comes on, and it’s hard to control because the heel reduces your effective cant, and your righting moment goes away. When the rudder starts to ventilate, you get into a bow-up attitude, and the angle of the main foil wants to launch the boat straight out of the water. It’s never a pretty moment when you get to a sort of heel criticality coming out of any maneuver. These boats have quite a bit of inertia when they’re accelerating. There’s a point when there’s brace-brace-brace rather than trying to save it. There is a point where you’re along for the ride.”

Hutchinson says they’d sailed their first AC75, Defiant, in 29 knots of wind, in conditions well above the racing wind range, so this was not new territory. “We needed to do that to give ourselves confidence we could do it when we needed to in a race,” he says. “When we do a maneuver like we did, we’re not doing it without confidence. The timing of the breeze going from 18 to 24 knots through the maneuver—that’s a reasonably big deal, but we were racing and reacting.”

It wasn’t necessarily the capsize itself that drove a stake through the heart of the boat. The AC75 is designed to survive a tip‑over and to be expeditiously righted. What they are not engineered for is the explosive and destructive forces of a crash landing the likes that Patriot experienced.

“Was the capsize the ending?” Hutchinson asks. “Nope. I would say it wasn’t the fact that we capsized. It was that we blew a hole in the boat. The knock-on effect was of massive consequence. But the line of accountability comes back to those of us racing the boat, and in these situations, we have to keep pressing the boat hard and keep racing. People who criticize and think they are experts need to understand there are only 72 sailors on the planet who have an understanding of what an AC75 can and cannot do.”

And only those who witnessed the miracles that occurred inside the American Magic compound in Auckland after the sinking can truly appreciate the Herculean task that followed. “From the moment we capsized and incurred the damage that we did, there was a switch in the program,” Hutchinson says. “What became apparent to the outside world was the strength of American Magic. What they—the shore team, design team and production team—achieved over that eight-day window to get us out on the water was nothing short of miraculous.”

Everything had to be stripped from inside the boat, Lyne says. “These things take 12 months to build and so many man-hours, and we replaced a sizable percentage of the hull shell—all the internal structure forward of the mast, and then the system guys rewired and replumbed the entire boat. What might take six weeks they did in 10 days in the end.”

Given the extent of Patriot’s rebuild, it’s another miracle the boat actually weighed and measured for its semifinal races, further testament to the effort that went on 24/7 inside the American Magic boat shed. To be able to sail again was truly remarkable, and that, Hutchinson says, is what still stings the most. He can’t shake the remorse he feels for letting down his builders and technicians with a winless scorecard.

While the whole of the American Magic team fought to “restart the heart” of Patriot, the Italians focused intensely on developing themselves and their boat into a faster and more cohesive sailing unit, to which the Americans would have no answer.

“The key component we gave to our ­competition at the most critical moment was time on the water,” Hutchinson says. “It could not have happened at a worse time.”

“The biggest thing in this game is how quickly development happens,” Lyne says. “Even though you think you’re going forward, other teams might be moving forward at a faster rate. You don’t know when the leapfrogs will happen because yours might be coming in the next iteration in systems, how you sail the boat, or a physical piece of gear. There is no doubt we were moving forward. In the race against Luna Rossa with the capsize, the boat was pretty slippery in uprange conditions. We had a speed ­advantage upwind and downwind.”

Although Hutchinson refuses to do so, he could take solace in the old saying that you’re only as good as your last race. In those seconds before the capsize, Patriot was the quickest AC75 of the fleet, and there was supposed to be much more racing and development to come. So much potential. Eliminated so soon. So brutally.

“I am sure we will be unfairly scored in the score book in terms of our race wins,” Lyne says. “But in terms of what we did that day and in the days that followed, and what the other teams did through the rescue and rebuild, is one of the biggest things for the sport. Probably, in some ways, it could be transformational for the yacht club. That’s American Magic’s biggest story—not giving in, and showing resilience. The legacy we have after this Cup is quite a big one versus the scoreboard.”

Hutchinson, of course, would love to have another crack at the Cup, and so too would enough brass at the New York YC to make it a possibility. “When it comes to a screeching halt in the manner it did for us…” Hutchinson says before pausing to compose himself. “We were prepared for a lot of things, but we were never prepared for the manner in which it ended.”

It’s brutal, he says again. But no one ever said the America’s Cup was anything else.

The post American Magic’s Brutal Exit appeared first on Sailing World.

In this episode of Around the Sailing World, we dig into Luna Rossa Prada Pirelli Team’s dominance in the PRADA Cup finals, which turns into a bit of fun show-and-tell with Ed Baird, Jonathan McKee and Gary Jobson.

The post Around the Sailing World, Episode 32 appeared first on Sailing World.

Matt, maybe we should start with your take on everything that has happened since before the Prada America’s Cup World Series regatta. Your overall look back on it.

Well, it’s been like a roller-coaster. It was definitely a tough place. I came to New Zealand in December and when I came out of quarantine we already knew then that we were up against the wall a little bit performance-wise. With the World Series looming we were starting to get a few ideas after sailing near other boats and it was becoming apparent we were kind of OK straight line, but we knew in maneuvers we seemed to be down speed.

It’s weird—the way this Cup has been designed—there was always meant to be very little sailing done. It was not accidental; that was the Cup the Kiwis wanted —they wanted most of the bulk of the work to be done on the computer, in the design stage and less on the water. And by the very nature of that, there has been very little opportunity to line up. But we kind of had an inkling what the problem was, but obviously the World Series was really, really tough for everyone in the team.

I think the hardest thing was that it felt a lot like Bermuda where we were in a similar situation and just off the pace. And it’s horrible. It’s just such a terrible feeling and you kind of wondered just how we were going to get out of it— especially it being that bad. I think there was always optimism in a sense, in that we were so far off the pace that it seemed like it was something you could identify and then it was fixable. We just knew it was something fundamental; it wasn’t a flaw in the design package we had—it just wasn’t quite working in the way we thought it would. So, it was all about trying to identify what it was and moving some of the blocks around and slotting them into place, which took a huge amount of work. The design team worked so hard—and the shore team implementing the changes.

Can you be more specific about which area of the boat was the critical one because obviously we know from Ben [Ainslie] that tons of things have been changed and there has been a focus on the sails and on the foils. Can you say which area was the critical one?

Well, we can’t say too much. We can’t give too much away. But yes, we obviously had a new rig, new sails and we did some changes to the wings. That’s kind of where we found most of the gains really.

The interesting thing right now is that you have been racing in medium-to-strong winds and you’ve had that one race against American Magic’s Patriot in very light air, but it was so light that it was more patchy than windy…Ben was saying it wasn’t a true read. At the moment is there a feeling that the team still hasn’t solved the light-air problem?

To an extent we still need to improve on that. There’s no question that the down-speed aspect is still something we need to have a good hard look at. When you look at the racing we’ve done, all that hard work has obviously paid off and its been a massive boost for the team, but we are also very aware that we’ve got a long, long way to go and so much to look at. Also, when you look at the races we’ve done, weather-wise we’ve raced the right people at the right time. We had the Americans when it was light; we had Luna Rossa when there was more breeze and their strengths are the other way round. So we know we’ve got an uphill climb to get to where we need to be.

You’ve got a 20-day break now – how will the work and activity be divided up over this period?

Mostly development stuff. Certainly all of this week is going to be focused on looking at developments, changes, how we sail the boat. Then we will get more into race focus next week. But there is a lot of stuff still on the table – changes that we thought about implementing long before. Now is an opportunity to maybe have a look at one or two of those things. But it is difficult; it is one of those things when it is hard to know how much to change and you don’t want to go too far. I think it’s more tweaks than wholesale changes, but there are still so many little gains to be found. Trust me, there is plenty of stuff on the shelf that’s been talked about and things that we want to look at and try and now is a really good opportunity to do that.

Can you explain the option choice as to whether or not you would ever use a Code Zero? Grant Dalton (CEO of Team New Zealand) has said TNZ is planning to use one in a very narrow wind band. Can we expect to see Ineos team UK out practicing with that or not?

Yeah, it’s definitely possible. I think the big problem with those sails is that they don’t necessarily get you up on the foils much quicker, believe it or not. You would think that that extra drive would help you do the job, but actually you get a lot of side force as well on the foils and actually they are not that great. There is definitely some work to be done there if we get some light-air opportunities. All the teams are thinking there are possibilities with them – they’ve got potential – but no one has quite been able to get them to work yet. It is interesting that the Kiwis are talking about it. It’s on the table, that’s for sure.

Is the issue that you have to have it on the rig furled, if you are not using it, and the penalty in terms of weight and drag of doing that?

No one is even furling them now. The problem with furling is having winches to be able to furl it back up, so you would literally be sailing with it for the whole race without a jib. So yeah, you would make the choice pre-race and that would be your headsail basically. And of course with the nature of these boats, as soon as you are up and foiling, you don’t want all that drag – you want that thing a lot flatter and a lot smaller. So that’s the problem really. It’s funny isn’t it, because you look at the light-air race we had with the Americans and you’d think for sure a Code Zero must help but actually, because of the amount of time we did get up foiling, it would have been a big old air drag. It would have been fine for the displacement stuff but that’s not where the race is won and lost. But yes, the Code Zero still has potential.

There has been much comment among sailors in Britain pointing out that what we have been seeing is top-class match race sailing by the British crew. It’s hard to point to any to any mistakes they have made in any of those five wins. It’s fascinating to get your view on this because you have two guys leading the team on the water, in Ben and Giles Scott (tactician), who are battle-hardened from the Olympics. Is that your impression, because the Italians seem to be making mistakes and the Americans have made mistakes, while the British crew look like they are in their element?

When we analyze our racing, it is definitely going really, really well. The boys are sailing really well, there is no question about that and I think they are all feeling good about it. But you can still find mistakes that are there. There are things that we could have done better – no question. There are always gains to be made. As good as it looks, the real problem we have – and it’s the same for all the teams – is we’ve done so little sailing in these boats and so little racing. I mean no racing compared to what you’d do in any other America’s Cup. You think back to the Cup we had back here in 2003 and the Cup in Valencia; you just sailed all the time and you went racing all the time. You spent three years doing it and everyone got really, really good at sailing those boats. There hasn’t been those opportunities, which is frustrating for everyone, but you are seeing everyone getting better and better and it’s a bit of a funny one with us not being in the semi-finals now. The benefit of being in there is you are going to get a bit more race practice and that is pretty key right now.

PRADA Cup 2021 – Round Robin 3

Obviously we are looking in from the outside and some of the headline characters are getting a lot of coverage. Who would you pick out over the last four weeks that perhaps have not been highlighted?

Obviously Giles and Ben are getting all the plaudits and you hear their comms all the time on the feed. But then you’ve got Luke Parkinson and Leigh McMillan doing the flight control stuff. When it comes down to the maneuvers and things like that, that is really in their wheelhouse. So they are doing a fantastic job there. I think you’ve got to bring Bleddyn Mon (mainsail trimmer) into the conversation…He is a really good young talented British sailor, but he is also very technical. He’s a smart guy with a design background. When we first found him back in the BAR (Ben Ainslie Racing) days, we were racing in the Extreme Sailing Series and in that series you could have an amateur. We started talking to Bleddyn who at that time was doing an internship with Red Bull Racing and helping their design team. We thought: ‘Wow! We better have a chat with this guy.’ So we got him involved both on the design side and on the sailing side and actually he turned out to be a golden find and super fit too. Now he has stepped into this new role of trimming the wing and he’s doing a great job. It’s not an easy position but he’s done brilliantly over the last few weeks – I’m really proud of how his development has been.

There has been lots of coverage of the crew roles on Britannia, with Ben as full time helm and Giles as full time tactician, with only six grinders and the athwartship set-up of the pedestals and the way the weight is distributed. Do you feel all of that is adding up to major differential between you and the Americans and you and the Italians?

It’s hard to know. It feels good. It feels like we have made the right decisions there. But is it really hard to know. It is definitely working well for us. It suits the people we’ve got. It suits our style of sailing but, that said, Luna Rossa are making a very good fist of it too and they are very, very hard to beat. So I think it is still small margins – we are definitely happy with it, but it’s certainly not going to make us unbeatable just because of that. At the end of the day it is still going to come down to whoever’s the fastest. It’s still going to be a boatspeed game. The America’s Cup always is – every time it comes down to that. It has never been won by a slower boat. Even if you are a click slower, you never quite get there.

The early impression is that TNZ has been a step ahead of all three of the challengers and that was the feeling all the way through to Christmas and probably in the early part of January. Is that still the feeling? Do you believe they are beatable by somebody in the Cup?

Yes, I do, but I think they are still ahead. It’s going be quite a mammoth task to get to where they are on boatspeed by whoever’s going to take them on. They are beatable because, as we’ve seen, things change so quickly. Look what’s happened to the Americans. Will it come down to things like that? Probably not, but you just never know – there is so much boatspeed to be found with these boats still. Just even in the way we sail them, there are lots of gains to be made so yeah, they are definitely beatable. We’ve seen it before. It’s not about being the fastest at the beginning, it’s about being the fastest at the end. And often the boats that are quick in the early days then kind of stall and max out their potential. But yes, I think we’d still look at them as quicker than everyone else right now and more of an all-round package – in any conditions everyone would struggle to beat them right now.

On the subject of the Americans, they obviously had a boat that is seriously quick in the breeze and they have had this massive setback. Do you see them as a potential Prada Cup finalist or is that a real long shot?

I think it is going to be a huge long shot. Firstly, you wouldn’t wish it on anyone what has happened to them, but even just the systems side of it is very difficult. If we were to take all of our systems out of the boat and then put them back in and try and race next weekend, I mean, Jesus, you would have all sorts of gremlins. They are going to get maybe one day sailing and then the tough thing is, in the first two days, if they lose four races, they are done. So they have got to hit the ground running. It’s a massive ask. To try and get the boat to measure correctly will be difficult – the weight is going to be one of the problems, trying to make sure it is correct. I really hope that they can do it. You never know. You can always get surprised by these things and hopefully they can turn it round, but I think they are going to be really struggling.

Isn’t it slightly weird that in some ways they have got the package to win this and yet they could be the first team to go home?

Yes. It is very strange and it must be hugely frustrating for them. The hardest thing is that it is so hard to do well in your first Cup as a team – really, really hard. Just trying to get all the right people in the right places in the team, all the management side, starting from five people sitting round a table and a clean slate and putting it all together. Then trying to build it up and especially with this Cup which is so technical. We’ve never seen anything like it – you’ve got to really be on your game. So for them to be at the stage they were – they were was so impressive – really impressive. But I don’t think anyone realizes the mammoth effort that it takes to design, build and then sail these boats. It’s unprecedented in yacht racing. So to get where they did and now it’s really frustrating and all down to 10 crazy seconds where things just unraveled for them. So it’s tough. They have managed to finish two races so far and if they can’t get their act together they are only going to do a few more. They have got to win in the next four races or that’s them done and dusted and that’s pretty tough isn’t it?

And your read-out on the Italians who look like they are going to be your principal opponents to try and get to ETNZ in the Match? You’ve beaten them three times in a row; what are your feelings about them?

I think they are going to be really hard to beat. It is looking that way right now and if it is the case, I think it will be a fantastic Prada Cup final. That last race we had against them was just nuts. I think it is going to be a lot of that. We have faced them when it’s been good breeze; when it is a little lighter they are going to be very hard to beat. So yeah, it could be multiple wins for both teams before it is finally decided. We won’t feel comfortable that we have it in the bag – it will be a really tough series. You know Jimmy (Spithill) and (Francesco) Bruni, they are very, very tenacious and they pre-start really well. We run stats on everyone’s pre-starts and they win a lot more than they lose and every pre-start we have with them, it could go either way.

There was that wonderful cross downwind at 45 knots that decided the race against them on Saturday. Do you think we are going to see more and more of that type of thing as this series develops – really nail-biting, millisecond margins between boats – and let’s hope no one gets it wrong big time?

Well yeah, that’s it. That would be terrible to see. I think unfortunately we could see a bit more attrition though. The Italians have had gear failures; we’ve had them and obviously the Americans have got a massive one. Hopefully that doesn’t rear its ugly head too much, but it probably will. But, yeah, I think it will be really close (with the Italians). We are pretty evenly matched right now and it will be tough. Anything we can do in the next two weeks to find a little bit of boatspeed – especially in the light-air stuff – will be a huge bonus. Right now it would be a tough one to call.

Grant Dalton was saying this weekend that he will back moves by the British team to have a fresh look at the measurement rules. This is in the light of what Ben was saying, after the race against the Italians on Saturday, about the one strike that the British team has for an infringement. He made it clear this was not a performance-enhancing infringement but he was clearly irritated that a second strike would mean the team being disqualified from one race in the Prada Cup final. Can you shed a little of light on where you are with this issue and what you are hoping can happen?

We would like to see the rule changed so that your second offence doesn’t mean you start getting disqualified from races…It just seems a little too harsh. It’s a funny one because it has been sitting there in the rules for while. But it is not until you are in that precarious situation of having that yellow card, that it really becomes quite apparent that it is not a good rule.

Which team protested you?

Yeah, it was the Italian team.

And they would presumably have to agree as Challenger of Record with the defenders (TNZ) to a change in the rules?

Yes exactly; we don’t get a say in it. It is between them and TNZ. The other thing to say is that what we were fined for, and the non-compliance we had, was very legitimate, so them putting the complaint in was fine. We’ve got no issue with that at all and they were absolutely right. And the measurer said ‘right, that’s non-compliant and you’ve got to change that.’ It was all down to an interpretation of openings in sails and what is an opening and what isn’t. We got it wrong. That’s our bad and we feel fine about that. What we certainly don’t want to get into is a game with them when we feel like we’ve got to do the same with them, to put them in the same position as we are in. Starting going over every millimeter of their boat trying to find things that we think are non-complaint – something that won’t help their performance but might enable us to nick a race. I’m not saying they are playing that game. They are very respectable guys and their complaint on us was fine, it was very legitimate. We weren’t sailing with something in the World Series that they saw on the first day of the round robin series and made a complaint and it was all fine. It would be nice to take that out of it a little bit I think, but that’s not our decision.

Finally Matt, you were there in Bermuda as part of the sailing team. How important was that Cup experience for what was then Ben Ainslie Racing in informing what has happened so far with this campaign?

Oh, Bermuda has been hugely important. We were able to change the team a fair bit after that. There are a lot of new faces here. But putting people in the right places, especially now with this foiling generation, it is a very different campaign. In the old days we were all a bit guilty of it – all the teams that were in Bermuda – all apart from the Kiwis last time. We were still fixed on that idea of incremental gains from testing on the water – trying to sail two boats. But it was a waste of time, a complete waste of time. All the work had to be done on the computer and actually what you had to do was just design the fastest boat you could and then figure out how you are going to sail the thing. And that is still kind of the case now. It sounds easy doesn’t it. But before, like here and in Valencia, it was just about hours on the water – two boats going upwind for two hours and downwind for two hours, changing this on one boat and changing that, and testing, testing, testing. It’s not about that any more. It’s completely different. And there’s a lot less sailors and a lot more designers. We have so many designers now – it’s a very different game.

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PRADA Cup 2021 – Round Robin 2

By the time American Magic skipper, CEO and tactician Terry Hutchinson faced the press conference pool on Sunday afternoon in Auckland, he was composed. Sitting alone at center stage in a black chair, he was prepared for the questions to come. Less than 24 hours earlier, his team’s AC75, Patriot, was awash to the deck, held afloat by dozens of buoyancy aids and as many more pumps, draining seawater from the belly of the boat.

One poignant memory, Hutchinson says, was watching an inflatable orange buoy being hoisted to the top of the mast. Stricken nearly 10 miles from the team’s Auckland base, he thought the worst: Patriot is going to the bottom.

An army of competitors and authorities raced to keep the boat afloat, however, as critical equipment was removed and a gaping hull in the port bow section was blocked enough to allow them to tow the boat back the base—backward.

In opening the press conference, Hutchinson acknowledged the “heroic” effort from all involved, including his rivals who lent hands, divers, tenders, buoys and whatever was required to keep the boat afloat. In this tight-knit community of sailors at the pinnacle of the sport, rendering assistance, no matter the stakes of the regatta, is not even a question. As soon as the boat came to rest on its port side, having become airborne and slamming down with great force, the rescue and recovery of Patriot and its 11-man sailing team was immediately in motion. This was the day rescue had teamed train for.

Unlike American Magic’s previous AC75 capsizes during training sessions, this one played out for all the world to see, as they rounded the final weather mark of their Round Robin 2 race against Luna Rossa Prada Pirelli Team. With the Italians well enough in American Magic’s rear-view mirror, and with only one downwind leg to the finish, a race win was in the making as they made their approach on port tack. Patriot’s Flight Controller, Andrew Campbell, positioned at the front of the starboard cockpit, had eyes on the right-hand side of the course and reported lighter wind and a 100-meter loss to the right-hand gate mark.

From the port-side cockpit, Hutchinson and helmsman, Dean Barker, were each looking at the same thing: a big, dark line of wind coming out of the left-hand corner of the racecourse. There was a fast-paced tactical discussion, audible in the onboard comms and later detailed by Hutchinson in the press conference. At the time, there were two standard playbook options to get through the gate: a safer bearaway-and-jibe at right mark or a tack-and bear-away at the left mark. Mainsail trimmer, Paul Goodison, can be heard expressing his preference for the right mark, noting the left turn would be a “difficult maneuver.”

Barker ultimately made the decision to tack in that one fateful but calculated split-second moment.

Even with hindsight, it was the right call at the time, Hutchinson says, and perhaps it is the right call today. The tack-and-bear-away was a maneuver they’d practiced plenty of times, and the race-winning move was to hook into the new breeze and put the race away.

It was impossible to foresee what would happen next.

PRADA Cup 2021 – Round Robin 2

“Forty seconds before, it was 12.5 knots,” Hutchinson says. “And when we tacked to bear away, it was blowing 23.5 knots.”

Once Goodison crossed the boat and Barker turned the wheel there was no going back or slowing down—that would have only made it worse, Hutchinson says: “The boat is very unforgiving, and when you throttle back…you’re in as much risk as when you pull your foot off the gas pedal as when you have it on it…the boat is most at control when going fast. When you slow, the loads go up and the boat becomes unstable. It’s easier to control when it’s ripping fast.”

As the gust hit, Barker bore away long and hard at 47 knots until the rudder lost its grip. The bow skied as the boat pirouetted and crashed down on its port side, quickly capsizing and pinning some crew members beneath the massive twin-skin mainsail.

In the hours leading up to the press conference, Hutchinson and Co., had debrief the capsize plenty enough for him to be confident in the chain of events and promptly addressed a question about the mainsail appearing to be held captive by a loaded leeward (port) backstay, preventing the sail from being further eased and possibly preventing the capsize. The traveler had already been eased to the end of its track, Hutchinson explained, and when the mainsail was eased, the leech likely snagged on the backstay.

“When the traveler is all the way down at the bottom of the track,” Hutchinson said. “That’s the first giveaway that something will go wrong.”

And, boy, did it go wrong.

Hutchinson said his cockpit immediately filled with water and the boat was floating differently than what he’d experienced in their previous capsize; an indication that the situation was worse. He described having to free himself with his safety knife, and in an earlier interview with America’s Cup TV’s Shirley Robertson, he said crew mate Cooper Dressler also helped cut him free. It was, “unnerving,” he says.

With all crew members quickly accounted for, the harried effort to prevent the boat from sinking further allowed them to tow it back to the base by nightfall, where it was craned into its cradle. The team has a high level of resolve Hutchinson said to the press, and over the next eight to 10 days the boat would be rebuilt, possibly scarfing a hull panel from the team’s first boat, Defiant, and most certainly using as much of the electronics as possible from it, including the problematic and supplied Foil Control System, which Hutchinson said was recently serviced. Repairing the hull is the easy part. It’s the gremlins in the mechatronics that will be far more difficult to manage. When Patriot returns to the water, Hutchinson says, it won’t be as pretty, but he hopes it will be at the level it was before the capsize.

Dealing with inevitable issues inside the boat while also trying to win races and advance to the Prada Cup Final will be a Herculean task, but that’s a concern for the future. For now, it’s all-hands-on-deck to work whatever magic they can to return to the racecourse.

Their return is a must for the Prada Cup, which enters its second phase next weekend with INEOS Team UK undefeated and Luna Rossa perfectly capable of winning races once they sort out their software and boathandling issues, which stymied them in the early rounds. Should INEOS continue its streak with another race win this coming weekend, they will advance to the Final, leaving Luna Rossa to sail against the highly-compromised American Magic in the first-to-four Semis, which start on January 29.

The two previous America’s Cup matches have been remarkable for their dramatic turnarounds—Oracle Racing’s comeback in San Francisco and Emirates Team New Zealand’s destructive capsize in Bermuda—so if recent history means anything, American Magic cannot be dismissed altogether—yet. Now, however, is the most hyperactive development phase of the Cup cycle for these three challengers, and while two teams continue to innovate and improve on a daily basis, one of them is fighting to get back on the water knowing that the confidence in their race boat is compromised. Should American Magic pull a rabbit out of its hat, it will certainly be an amazing story.

Never a dull moment in the America’s Cup.

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The Prada Cup Challenger Selection Series is set to start on January 15 in Auckland, New Zealand, with the three Challengers competing to qualify to race against the America’s Cup Defender Emirates Team New Zealand in the America’s Cup Match.

The Prada Cup consists of 17 racing days starting with a multiple Round Robin format where – Luna Rossa Prada Pirelli, New York Yacht Club American Magic and INEOS Team UK face off each other for four times.

The team with the most points at the end of the Round Robins moves directly to the PRADA Cup Final, while the remaining two teams compete in a best of seven wins, head-to-head, Semi-Final between the 29th January and the 2nd February.

The PRADA Cup Final, between the 13th and the 22nd of February, is a best of thirteen race series where the first team to reach seven wins will win the Prada Cup trophy and be awarded the rights to be the Challenger for the 36th America’s Cup presented by Prada and to race the Defender, Emirates Team New Zealand.

Two races per day are scheduled during the Prada Cup, the race window between 3:00 PM- 6:00pm NZT with the exception of the Final’s races which will be between 4:00 PM- 6:00pm NZT.

The racecourse will be a windward-leeward configuration outlined by boundaries with an upwind start and its length (approximately between 1.1 to 2.2 nm) will depend upon the exact location of the course and prevailing weather conditions. The permitted wind range is between 6.5 and 21 knots for the Round Robins and the Semi-finals and between 6.5 and 23 knots for the PRADA Cup Final.

The course on which the teams will sail, will be decided every racing day by the Race Management and detailed information for on water spectator will be available on americascup.com

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In one of a handful of test days to come, all the technology needed to showcase the racing to the world from the 17th of December when the Prada America’s Cup World Series Auckland kicks off, was put through its paces on December 8.

These are key days for the many race officials, on water marshals, broadcast crew to diagnose anything which might occur during actual racing. They are also equally important for the teams, who are now officially allowed to engage each other for the very first time.

Regatta Director Iain Murray allowed the teams to invite each other into the start box from 3:00 till 6:00 pm. Emirates Team New Zealand and New York Yacht Club American Magic opened the dance with a series of practice starts in stunning Auckland sailing conditions.

Luna Rossa also stepped into the ring, and before so, co-helmsman Jimmy Spithill confirmed he and teammate Francesco Bruni would be splitting drive time.

“Basically, we’re each taking a side,” Spithill says, adding that both would be trimming the foil when not on the helm. “We decided to run that way and who knows if it’s right or wrong. There are pros and cons of both setups. The downside is you get half the time of the other helmsmen and foil trimmers, but there is an upside in the maneuvering in that we can go at the drop of a hat. We’ll have to wait and see which is better suited for certain conditions as well.

As this arrangement is unique, it’s not likely at this stage they’ll return to a traditional setup of crossing the boat after maneuvers. “You better off just staying in one side so the muscle memory is the same,” Spithill says. “I’m on the starboard side, so at least I’m on starboard tack.”

Observers of early training and after the practice session say the Italians are fluid with their boathandling and speed is not an issue, but Spithill has been in the game long enough to no speak too soon as to which of the four teams is showing the most promise. “Hopefully the [World Series] regatta will identify a pecking order,” he says, “but I really don’t know. My gut says, ‘don’t make any assumptions yet. It’s too early, there’s a lot of differences in the foils and hulls. So, yeah, everyone has recon, but until we line up, we don’t really know.”

According to race organizers, the race management went well, as did the test broadcast, noting it was: “An intense day for the TV as well with the highly sophisticated media equipment being operational on all boats and transmitting during the practice sessions. Just as importantly, the race officials had the chance to test their race systems, and more importantly start putting into action processes and controls which until today have just been plans on paper.”

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“To win the America’s Cup, you first have to win the Prada Cup,” says the 36th America’s Cup Challenger of Record. Easier said than done, of course, as Team Luna Rossa Prada Pirelli must do the same as the New York YC’s American Magic and Ineos Team UK, before facing Emirates Team New Zealand in the real-deal sail off for the Auld Mug.

The Prada Cup will consist of four round robins three races each; a seven-race semi-final and a 13-race final between the two leading teams. Each win scores 1 point. The Challenger with the highest score at the end of the round robins advances to the Prada Cup Final; the remaining two teams will race again in the semi-final and the first to win four races enters the final. The first team to score 7 points in the final wins the Prada Cup and will challenge the Defender, Emirates Team New Zealand, in the Match of the 36th America’s Cup presented by Prada.

PRADA CUP 2021 SCHEDULE

ELIGIBILITY and MEASUREMENT

Competitors Declaration of its Yacht Configuration

A final schedule for the weighing of crew shall be published by the Rules Committee under Class Rule 34.1 on or before 15 July 2020.

RACING

* second race of the day (if any) will be started as soon as possible after completion of the first, but not earlier than 20 minutes.

** Friday 19 February will not be used as a Race Day if the Regatta Director (after consultation with the Competitors) considers racing is not required that day to meet the intended objective of completing the Prada Cup Final over the weekend of 20/21 February 2021. He may also elect to only conduct one race that day.

Notes on Reserve Days

Tuesday 16 February May be used as a Race Day if the Regatta Director so decides (after consultation with the Competitors) due to the Stage being behind schedule after the first two Race Days on 13 and 14 February.

Monday 22 February to If the Prada Cup Final is not completed prior to 22 February Wednesday 24 February then racing will continue every day until completion or until the (included) end of the last Race Day 24 February.

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