TAKING FLIGHT IN SPAIN

INEOS Britannia has wrapped up its sailing operations in Palma and has moved to Barcelona where the team’s America’s Cup base is fully operational.

The inaugural sailing day in Barcelona saw the team sail their One-Design AC40 race boat Athena with the countdown now on to the start of racing, with the first event hosted by Vilanova i La Geltrú just a few miles down the coast from Barcelona between 14 - 17 September, followed by Jeddah in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia from 29 November – 2 December. Both these events will be raced in the One-Design AC40 Class.

Next to head out onto the waters of Barcelona will be the team’s test and development boat T6. This will commence the crucial, final block of testing ahead of the remaining design decisions for the AC75 Class race boat that will contest the America’s Cup in 2024. INEOS Britannia have already completed nine months of testing in T6, which has been vital in bringing together the two organisations that INEOS Britannia represents: the sailing team that came out of back-to-back America’s Cups in 2017 and 2021 and the Mercedes F1 group.

“Every day on the water counts in the America’s Cup,” said Ben Ainslie, CEO and team principal for INEOS Britannia.

“We are the first British team to challenge for three, back-to-back Cups since Sir Thomas Lipton. The racing period is only just around the corner and although the prelims are in One-Design boats it is still a line in the sand for the sailing crews as we look to perform against our fellow competitors.”

Previous America’s Cup class boats, like the AC45 and AC50 catamarans, take a significant volume of the shipping containers to transport all elements, and the costs quickly mounted up.

“When we were designing the AC40, we had to take into consideration how we were going to ship the boat around the world,” explained ETNZ mechanical engineer Martin McElwee.

“We came up with this custom flat rack arrangement which keeps the boat within a 40ft container gauge except for the height. It is designed so when it is on a low loader trailer to be no higher than 4.8m, which is pretty much the maximum trucking height that you can truck around the world without too many issues with permits.”

For the team, first impressions of Barcelona have been positive with helmsman Peter Burling saying: “Much has been made of the Barcelona conditions and swell so it was good to get a first taste of the water where we will battle out the next America’s Cup. We have plenty to learn and a range of di erent conditions to get out into and experience.”

ETNZ are now into an intense training period that will combine sailing both the AC75 and the One-Design AC40 before returning to Auckland at the end of October for more testing and analysis work on their AC40 in the New Zealand summer.