How Sweet it is! The America’s Cup victory

How Sweet It Is

By Ivor Wilkins As New Zealand erupted in jubilant celebration over the successful defence of the America’s Cup, the scarlet and black Te Rehutai machine which scored an epic 7-3 victory over the Italian Challenger disappeared from sight into its hangar at the Emirates Team New Zealand base.

For chief designer Dan Bernasconi, who is credited as the main mastermind behind the AC75 concept, it was a bittersweet moment. He wished the racing could continue — at least for one more day.

“We were looking at tomorrow’s forecast,” he said, which promised a change from the predominantly light-to moderate conditions that prevailed for the 10-race series. “It would be great to do more racing in a bit more breeze. The boat just loves breeze. Upwind in 15-20 knots, it is sensational. It has a lot more to give in those conditions.”

Luna Rossa Prada Pirelli skipper, Max Sirena, had a different view. “I was keen to do all 13 races in the first day,” he said. The Italians knew the longer the match went on, the more the defender would improve.

The way the Covid-interrupted schedule played out created a rare situation where the dice loaded in favour of the challenger. The cancellation of the two European regattas robbed all the teams of valuable racing opportunities, but once they set up camp in Auckland, the challenger had three times more racing than the defender.

In its entire preparation for the match, Emirates Team New Zealand only had six races, all of them in the pre-Christmas regatta, at a time when the teams were at the bottom of a steep learning curve.

After that, the home team trained alone on the sidelines for two months through to a Covid-delayed America’s Cup start on March 10, while the challengers raced amongst themselves, honing equipment, race-craft and technique.

“Luna Rossa made massive improvements after December; their performance ramp was almost vertical,” ETNZ afterguard Glenn Ashby said. “They were also sailing their boat better and better and pulling off manoeuvres we thought weren’t possible early on.”

All the teams, including ETNZ, attested that every day of racing provided new lessons and performance gains. Italy knew their best chance of wresting the Cup away was to strike early and strike hard. “We missed a few opportunities at the beginning,” Sirena acknowledged. “We felt we could win more races.”

Nevertheless, by dominating the starting box and adopting an “elbows out” strategy of keeping a close cover, Italy came out punching and did put early points on the board, putting up the best performance by an Italian crew

in the Cup’s long history. With the Italian flag draped around him, co-helmsman Francesco Bruni was right in saying, “We lost with honour and dignity and we fought to the end”.

His fellow helmsman, Jimmy Spithill added: “I felt like we could have won a few more races against the Kiwis, but to be honest, at times it felt we were taking a knife to a gunfight.”

This was Prada magnate Patrizio Bertelli’s fifth tilt at the Cup, matching tea baron Sir Thomas Lipton’s dedication to the cause. Because of the Covid situation in Italy, Bertelli did not attend in Auckland, but he did reveal that Sir Peter Blake once sent him a letter saying that “the secret is to keep doing the Cup endlessly until you win it”.

He appears to have taken the advice to heart, because Cup fans were cheered to hear he is coming back for more, according to Sirena.

It is an addictive business and this Cup series in Auckland showed that its attraction is stronger than ever. With the grim shadow of Covid hanging over the world, the scenes that played out over the Auckland summer were amazing. Day after day, massive crowds thronged the Cup village and waterfront vantage points. Spectator fleets estimated at more than 2,000 boats flanked the narrow arena, creating a stadium on the water. Images were beamed to 196 countries around the world as the other-worldly AC75s flew across the water and put on an incredible show.

They demonstrated they were not just outlandish speed machines, but capable match race weapons. In the hands of highly skilled pilots, they engaged in close quarters combat. Their waterborne dogfights had all the elements of classic match racing — tacking duels, slam dunks, lee-bow tacks, port-starboard ducks, tactical intrigue, sweeping mark roundings.

It was sad that Bernasconi and the fans did not see the boat Ashby described as a “rocket ship” racing in 15-20 knots, but it is hard to complain about boats that were able to provide compelling racing in 8-10 knots, clocking speeds of 30-40 knots.

The inimitable Bruno Trouble, who has been a competitor and student of the America’s Cup game for more than four decades, said the Auckland series produced some of the best racing in history.

There was no talk of watching paint dry — although, to be fair, the opening skirmishes did reflect another age-old match race feature with a lack of passing after the start.

“A game of two halves …” is a hackneyed line often trotted out in parodies of mudsplattered All Black test captains providing after-match comments. It would work just as well in describing the 36th America’s Cup.

The first half exchanges were engrossing more for the see-saw action in the scoreline than for the racing itself. Sailors often complain of shifty breezes making a minefield of the race track, but in this instance steady breezes were a problem.

Everything depended on the start, with the port entry advantage weighing heavily on the outcome. After the start, an absence of significant wind shifts shut down passing opportunities. The races became triple processions around the race track, punctuated by moments of anxiety or hope when the lead shrank from 300m to 100m.

Fans longed for a return of that thrilling Prada Cup engagement between Luna Rossa and Ineos Team UK when the full potential of these machines was unleashed in a battle with nine lead changes.

The scoreline, though, reflected a proper battle. Not since 1983 and that cliffhanger match between Alan Bond’s wing-keeled Australia II and Dennis Conner’s scarlet Liberty had we seen a 3-3 deadlock.

This first half stage was like the early rounds of a heavyweight boxing match, both fighters probing for weakness, feinting and jabbing, sizing each other up. One of the big early lessons was the deadly effect of highly efficient sailplans ripping holes in the air, particularly in light breezes. The lead yacht in the starting sequence could become vulnerable if it gybed too sharply at the boundary, bringing it back through its own

Patrizio Bertelli ... coming back for more.

wind shadow and providing an opportunity for the following boat to compound the problem with its own turbulence.

The pre-start “hook”, often used to good effect in conventional match racing, became a high-risk move. Unless the attacking boat had a massive speed advantage, the last-minute dive to leeward hit the wind shadow like a wall.

After the start, the leading boat could use the wind shadow to great effect to control the opponent. “Gas off the lead boat in light air is a killer,” said Spithill.

Using the wind shadow has always been a weapon in sailing, but its impact is far greater with these boats. Afterguard discussions took on sinister language of chemical warfare, with talk of “gassing” the opponent at every opportunity.

The dominance of the port entry was another major talking point. It offered a simpler time and distance path with only one manoeuvre required to get to the startline, while the starboard entry yacht required at least two.

The advantage became so pronounced it was likened with tennis, where the service game is so powerful. Winning a starboard entry start was akin to breaking serve.

The first four races of the America’s Cup were all won by the port entry boat, leading to a 2-2 deadlock. Then, in a single day, both teams confounded the theory and snatched starboard-entry victories by deploying gas attacks in the final push to the line. “The starboard entry was very strong today,” grinned Italian co-helmsman Bruni.

As the game played out to its conclusion, the port-entry bias lost power. Of the 10 matches sailed, four were won by starboard starters, just under 50%.

This was similar to the Prada Cup challenger series. Of the 19 viable races (discounting two “ghost races” following American Magic’s fateful capsize) 10 were won by the port-entry boat, just over 50%.

With the computing power on board, it was baffling that time-on-distance runs in the starting arena were often miscalculated, forcing the boats to kill time — risking a costly splash down off the foils. “At these speeds, everything requires split-second decisions,” Bruni explained. “A 0.5 knot change in the windspeed is 20 seconds on the startline.”

“We are learning all the time,” Burling

agreed. “The starting strategies are becoming more well thought-out.”

The different styles of the boats and of the two afterguards influenced the way these strategies played out. Luna Rossa’s foil package was more forgiving and allowed them to apply the brakes and hover briefly in the startbox. It also gave them a very effective high mode upwind. They came out of tacks pointing high – “climbing the ladder,” observed Ineos grinder David ‘Freddie’ Carr, watching proceedings from a helicopter.

Emirates Team New Zealand opted for a foil package estimated at 25-30% smaller in area, offering less drag, but more demanding to sail and more vulnerable at slow speeds. Out of manoeuvres, they required more of a speed build.

The effect of the different modes was reflected in the distance sailed around the course. On average, the New Zealand boat sailed lower and faster, but put about 1,500m more mileage on the clock in every race.

Commenting on their foil package, Bernasconi believed ETNZ went through more iterations than the other teams. Their first two pairs of foils were asymmetrical. “The only matching foils we had were the last pair, which covered a broad range of different conditions.”

The ability to make small, low drag foils effective in light wind lay in the flap controls, Bernasconi revealed. “You are allowed twist in the flaps. The lift distribution along the foil depends on how that is managed. To induce twist, you can place actuators along the flap. For example, you can have one actuator inboard and another one outboard and change the twist.”

To overcome Prada’s early tacking superiority, Burling and his crew developed a moth-style roll tacking technique, adjusting the foil cant and sail trim to induce windward heel, then swinging through the turn and lifting the new windward foil out of the water as fast as possible to gain acceleration.

“We went through a big journey of how to tack efficiently,” said Bernasconi. “That was still going on right up to the final race. There is so much choreography in the tacks – what you do with the cant angles, the shape of the mainsail and all the control around that, timing the drop of the foil arm. It is a complicated sequence.”

Before the match hostilities began, mainstream media made wild claims of ETNZ’s speed advantage, which were quickly exposed as hype. Shared wins through the first six races suggested the boats were fairly evenly matched, although the wind conditions suited Luna Rossa’s light-wind sweet spot better than New Zealand’s.

Tied up at 3-3, some analysts pointed to the winning margins as proof that New Zealand had a speed edge. New Zealand posted wins of 31 seconds, 63 seconds and 101 seconds, while Italy’s victories were closer at 7 seconds, 37 seconds and 18 seconds.

Again, that may have reflected more a difference in style than substance. Spithill and Bruni come out of more traditional match race backgrounds and, even in these new boat types, they observe the established rituals of match racing. Win the start, establish the lead, then “stick your elbows out” and cover relentlessly. That defensive approach kept the racing closer, hence smaller finishing deltas.

Burling and his two main afterguard lieutenants, Blair Tuke and Glenn Ashby, come out of high-performance skiff sailing, more about heads-up sailing the course, looking ahead for every sniff of a wind shift or pressure advantage. When New Zealand got ahead, they went hunting for more.

“They don’t look back,” said commentator Peter Lester. “They let their weapon do its thing.” Accordingly, they posted bigger margins.

Certainly, as the teams completed the first half of the series and trudged off the pitch to suck oranges and a pep talk from the coaches, the deadlocked score gave Italy hope. “There was a lot of talk about ETNZ being 5-10 knots faster,” said Bruni. “Clearly that is not the case.”

True to the two-halves trope, however, when the players resumed battle after the interval, the complexion of the game changed entirely. The ETNZ crew found its mojo and were immediately faster, slicker, more clinical. Although Luna Rossa won three of the four remaining starts, New Zealand revealed their speed edge was more than just “a click”.

Upwind and down, the VMG difference was significant, often 2-3 knots faster, sometimes 4-5 knots.

On top of small detail changes with the sailing hardware, most of this improvement came from collaboration between the sailing team and coaches to extract more speed from what they had.

“It was pleasing to see us get better each day,” said coach Ray Davies. “It’s what we always asked of each other, to keep improving. It was

Upwind and down, the VMG difference was significant, often 2-3 knots faster, sometimes 4-5 knots.

very satisfying that the guys on the boat were embracing not just the match racing side of it, but understanding the boat better every day.

“The intensity that went into their debriefs to get a second or half a second better through a manoeuvre was pretty phenomenal.”

The match race textbook says winning the start is crucial. Burling’s record going back to Bermuda suggests there is another way – as long as you have boatspeed. As the team opened up the throttles, they notched up four wins in a row, three of them after lost starts.

The starting statistics bother the afficionados more than they bother Burling, who picks his way around the course, stalking the other boat and waiting to pounce on the slightest mistake. Bruni was asked how it felt to be constantly trying to thwart this menacing threat. “It is like trying to drown a fish under water,” he replied.

Glenn Ashby, who plays a big tactical role while constantly shape-shifting the mainsail for maximum power, gave a less poetic response to criticism of New Zealand’s starts. “The start is one part of the race. The finish is another part,” he explained.

“There is a whole lot in the middle. It is complex and tricky. We go into each race open minded about how we will sail. Sometimes there are set plays, other times you go freestyle, look at the conditions and make decisions on the fly.

“You are going through puffs and lulls at a huge rate of knots. It is like dot-to-dot sailing on steroids. The mental computing you have to do is at such a fast pace, you can’t always have a conversation. You have to react and anticipate what the next move will be.”

It is in those tricky, freestyle zones that Burling, Tuke and Ashby bring their high-speed, freewheeling skiff and moth-type sensibility to the America’s Cup. “The incredible thing about the AC75 is that it is a massive boat, but very dynamic to sail,” said Burling. “It weighs over 6 tons, yet it feels like a little boat, dynamic and quick with its moves. It is incredible to see a boat that size being thrown around and doing the speeds they do.”

At match point, New Zealanders nervously reminded themselves of the Spithill taunt — “imagine if they lose from here” — that has haunted them since the devastating San Francisco defeat in 2013. But this time there was no comeback.

The deciding final match was a start-tofinish clinic, with ETNZ nailing the start and stretching out on every leg to return the famous trophy back to its place of honour in the Royal New Zealand Yacht Squadron.

The next day, as New Zealand nursed welcome hangovers from the victory party, the breeze filled out over the race course. Just as forecast, the weather gods at last provided exactly the conditions Bernasconi had so keenly hoped for.

Te Rehutai, however, remained tucked away behind closed doors.

Despite his regrets in that regard, Bernasconi said there was always confidence that Te Rehutai would be competitive across the range. “It was an all-round boat.”

Reflecting on the summer’s racing, Bernasconi said it was hard to put a number on how much ETNZ’s performance improved from the time racing began to the end. “It depends on the conditions. We improved more in some than others.”

In terms of equipment, the team added new foils, new sails and a new rudder, which could be set at three vertical positions, depending on conditions.

“Overall, I would say we made a 5-10% gain,” he said. “As far as how much we left in the shed? Not much in terms of light air performance. We were pretty maxxed out in that regard. If we raced in a stronger breeze, we would have seen some pretty cool performance numbers.”

As for the AC75 class, Bernasconi was relieved that four different teams were able to race competitively in the first iteration of a radical new design, even though there were significant differences between them. “There is not that much convergence yet.

“There is definitely more to come from this class. If we built a third boat now, it would be quite different from Te Rehutai.

“We saw speeds just over 50 knots out of this generation. The top end speed range is always going to be limited by cavitation. It is hard to see that getting much higher. At the other end of the range – light upwind performance — is where you would try to make the biggest improvements.”