No magic bullet: why AC38 will be a game of marginal gains

That’s all according to Emirates Team New Zealand’s lead designer Dan Bernasconi, talking in Auckland yesterday after the Kiwi AC75 was rolled out of the shed and rigged for the first time in this latest Cup cycle, after a major revamp that involved some 10,000 hours of work.

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Two members of the America’s Cup shared reconnaissance programme – videographer/photographer Sam Thom (NZL) and rib driver/reporter Pierluigi De Felice (ITA) – were on hand to chronicle what turned out to be just a rigging and calibration day due to strong easterly winds out on the Hauraki Gulf.

Speaking to the recon pair after the boat had been de-rigged and returned to the hangar, Bernasconi admitted that the team was disappointed not to be able to go sailing for the first time, due to the weather

The plan, it seems, was to have worked through an on-the-water checklist of system tests to make sure the boat was fully functional out on the water after its slate of modifications.

“Structurally, we have made some changes to the boat,” Bernasconi said. “We want to make sure everything’s in good shape and we just want to lower our risk by doing that on a day when it’s not gusting up to 20 knots – particularly with a new sailing crew as well.”

That reference to a new sailing crew refers in particular to two newcomers to the squad for AC38, Chris Draper (GBR) and Seb Menzies (NZL) – both of whom have been earmarked as potential helmsmen opposite skipper Nathan Outteridge (AUS) – along with New Zealand Olympic gold medallist Jo Aleh, who is in prime spot to become the first female to race aboard the Kiwi boat in the America’s Cup. Those three are part of a Kiwi squad for AC38 led by Outteridge that includes veterans Blair Tuke, Andy Maloney, and Olympic bronze medallist and ex-cyclor Sam Meech.

Bernasconi confirmed the new tranche of modified AC75s would be lighter than they were in AC37. Weight, he said, had been taken out of the foils and ‘a few other areas’.

That reduction along with the absence of bodyweight from four cyclors (now replaced with a specialist battery bank), and the addition of an extra crew member and a guest racer, is all expected to have changed the weight distribution in the boat significantly – a factor Bernasconi and his fellow designers will have needed to adjust for.

“You have to look at it all as a sort of overall balance and make sure we are within the rule box, but at the front end of it,” Bernasconi explained.

Asked what roles the additional fifth sailor might take on during racing, Bernasconi said that having a dedicated sail trimmer was an obvious option – with some strategy input thrown in for good measure.

“You have got two helmsmen and two foil trimmers [and] the sail trim was kind of divided up between those people previously. So, for sure, they’ll be doing more sail trim – and probably also more strategy [given that] you have got more opportunity to have heads out of the boat now that you have an extra sailor.”

When it comes to which additional areas the Kiwis and the other competing teams will be poring over in order to find extra incremental gains in AC38, Bernasconi said there was opportunity for “lots of optimisation in a load of different areas” – including plenty of unexplored options that the Kiwis “didn’t get to” during the previous Cup cycle.

“The details in the fairings around the jib and main travellers – you’re always wondering how you can do better there,” he said. “In terms of sensors on the foils, INEOS last time had some nice flow sensors, which we have adopted for this campaign.”

According to Bernasconi, the New Zealand team’s strategy for AC38 is to “take any gains we can as they come along”.

“Every decision we make we are taking the positives. There are [sometimes] trade-offs in terms of cost or weight – and then we have to look at one versus the other. But, no, we haven’t projected forward and said that by the time we race we are going to be five percent quicker than we were in Barcelona.”

The new generation of modified America’s Cup yachts look set to be lighter than they were in AC37 and are expected to perform better at the lower end of the wind range, although top speeds could be similar to what we saw in Barcelona.

Bernasconi said reducing the boats’ weight would make the AC38 versions “a lot quicker”, while in windier conditions the weight loss would equate to a loss in righting moment that could mean they were marginally slower.

“Probably, though, you would make a gain back again in having more efficiency in the foils and how we are controlling the boat.”

Based on this first piece of reconnaissance data gathering it seems fair to conclude that the teams at the 38th America’s Cup are going to be focused on making incremental gains in a multitude of areas – rather than one huge advance that upsets the apple cart.

“I doubt there will be a team that comes out with something completely radical that changes the game,” Bernasconi said, but qualified that with: “If they do, and they’re successful, it will be a big upset.”