Champagne’ conditions and two-boating for the Americans

They dreamed of days like today when they were training in Pensacola over the winter, and for the NYYC American Magic team it was all action with their two LEQ12 moded AC40s absolutely ripping into each other over four hours of high-octane racing. We had it all – two board down slow manoeuvres, high-flying, trail-backs, crash downs, ventilations, skids, you name it and it was all on display in Barcelona today. Thrilling to watch, the AC40 is going to be sensational when we get to the first pre-regatta in Vilanova I La Geltrú in September and the only headache that Terry Hutchinson now has is: who does he select as his starting crew for the regatta?

The team have been rotating in the Youth sailors Finn Rowe, Severin Gramm and Harry Melges whilst Riley Gibbs is proving to be a good match for the foiling superstars of Tom Slingsby and Paul Goodison. The pathway now to the America’s Cup is opening up and the next generation of sailors who will be winning the famous trophy in years to come are looking like tantalising prospects that are more than willing to gate-crash the top table – and with a smile on their faces.

A simply outstanding interview afterwards with trimmer today onboard ‘America’ Finn Rowe who introduced himself to the world saying: “Well first off, I'm from Wisconsin which is one of the places that one of the other youth sailors is from as well, Harry Melges, we grew up together sailing pretty much our whole entire life. One of the first more high performance boats I started sailing was the 29ers, I actually sailed with Harry in the 29ers and then once we got a little bit bigger we got into the 49er and we did an Olympic campaign up until like 2021 because the Olympics was postponed a little bit for COVID and then after that Harry kind of got a little bit more into serious pro-sailing and Moth sailing and stuff like that and I went to school and then the youth America's Cup start stuff started happening. I did a couple of try-outs and yeah now I'm just really lucky to be here.”

And Finn enthusiastically continued, recounting how he got selected saying: “Basically the trials for our youth guys started probably last summer and I wasn't involved at first and then some of my friends like Harry and Severin (Gramm) - the other youth guys - starting to tell me about it like ‘hey you should come try out’ so I came and tried out this winter and did a bunch of sailing in 69F’s down in Miami. I learned to love those boats and competing in foiling boats and then this summer, or more like the Spring, I got a call from one of the guys that runs our youth programme saying ‘hey like they need some guys to come step in with the two boating this summer’ and it’s probably the easiest question I could answer ‘yes absolutely I'll come to Barcelona and race these boats because you know they're pretty awesome.”

Talking about the day, again Finn’s enthusiasm shone through as he said: “At the beginning it was definitely a little bit easier than some of my past days trimming, it was a little wavier a couple of days ago, obviously it’s a little bit harder to lock in the boat when it's wavier but it was a little bit lighter at first and then the wind started to increase which was nice but it started off being pretty smooth sailing, definitely a lot smoother than the past couple of days and then as it increased the waves picked up a little bit and got a little more difficult but yeah it's good day…hardest part today was probably once the wind picked up a little bit, this was my first day two boating so it was it was pretty awesome to be honest you know just seeing another boat on the racecourse and just you know tight crosses, those guys just to windward of you ripping around the course so just kind of getting acclimated with another boat on the course is probably the biggest thing for me that I was focusing on.”

Remember the name – Finn Rowe – a superstar in the making.

NYYC American Magic were on the water for just over four hours in winds touching 14 knots towards the late afternoon and recorded a total flight time for ‘America’ who stayed out a little longer of some 2 hours and 17 minutes. Valuable days for the young Americans who are learning from the best and thoroughly enjoying the process.

Over in Cagliari meanwhile, Luna Rossa Prada Pirelli was down to business quickly in a breeze that topped 18 knots and a vicious onshore swell that more than focussed the sailors and rewarded big breeze technique. On every account, the team passed with flying colours in a masterful display of boat-handling. Much credit goes to Vittoria Bissaro and Umberto Molineris who kept the LEQ12 low-riding and absolutely rock-steady through the technical testing early on followed by the customary course laps. Great technique around the leeward mark of dropping the windward board to perform the turn up to keep the boat dead level and then winding up the windward board once the boat was on course upwind.

Super-coach Hamish Wilcox summed the day up beautifully saying: “Well, it was champagne sailing today you know we had the breeze build up to 18 knots and some nice waves coming around the corner as it eddied in and it held for long enough to get the job done so we were really, really, happy with today… it was hitting 18 for a bit and it wasn't a long period at 18 but it was a couple of hours and that allowed the sea state to build up a little bit and you know started to represent a good day in Barcelona!”

Sailing in the big swells as the wind eased into the afternoon, and with six crew onboard, the Italians were in full windward ballast mode, bringing two crew up to windward as the LEQ12 attained target speed for flight with even the aft pod member ‘sitting out’ on the windward side as the spray lashed across the decks. No place for the feint-hearted.

The Italians switched out their mainsail at the end of the session to test the new mainsail that they debuted last week for the last 30 minutes and allow the Chase Boat team to take plenty of photographs of this deep twist sail and Hamish seemed pleased that they manged to get the testing in saying: “Yeah, it's good really, we were hopeful that we could get that done. We knew the breeze was dropping all the time and it was on the edge as you can see you know we just squeezed it in, it would have been a lot of work for nothing otherwise, so it was really awesome to be able to get it up and have a look at it and see it in a different breeze.”

Asked about what the debrief would look at after sailing and whether it was more of a technique or design day today, Hamish answered: “Probably it’s half and half at the moment roughly you know there's always plenty to work on with our technique, our sailing technique, and obviously we're always just ticking things off on the design side as well.”

Luna Rossa Prada Pirelli are seriously at the races in this America’s Cup cycle and performances like today underline their top billing amongst the Challengers. More to come from the Italians this week – sensational to watch.