GB1 America’s Cup team updates on AC75 modifications
A new video released by the 38th America’s Cup Challenger of Record GB1 has highlighted the deltas between the British team’s campaign and their New Zealand, French, and Italian rivals.
In the video, GB1 CEO Ian Walker makes his first visit to review progress on the refit of the GB1 AC75. It’s hard not to contrast that visit with the content coming out of Luna Rossa and the Kiwis, who have both been racking up valuable days on the water since much earlier this year. The French La Roche-Posay Racing Team have also sailed their modified AC75 from their base in Lorient – although a capsize and subsequent battery fire three weeks ago have seen the boat back in the hangar for repairs since then.
In the British video, the GB1 AC75 is described as being hidden away at a ‘secret location’. (For what it’s worth, a quick Google image search of the aerial view of the city in the video suggests that it’s Avellino – about 50 kilometres from next year’s AC38 venue Naples. That shot, of course, could be stock footage intended to put nosy journalists off the scent.)
When Walker climbs down below on the old Britannia, he is heard to remark: “Everything’s out”, suggesting that the boat is, at this stage, very much an empty shell.
“This is my first visit to see the boat today,” he continues. “The first stage of what they are doing here is cutting out any unnecessary parts of the boat that won’t be required under the new rules. Then as the drawings come along, they’re starting to work up to adapt the boat. The principal visible change people will see will be getting rid of the cyclors and the reduction in the crew numbers.”
Walker – who joined the British campaign as CEO for AC38 – comments on how impressed he is with the way the boat had been built.
“It’s a work of art down below,” he says. “And, actually, having spent the last few months around the AC40s, it’s a useful reminder of the scale and power of these [AC75] boats.”
The video also features GB1’s 35-strong design team that works out of offices in Portsmouth on the south coast of England. According to technical director Nick Holroyd – a veteran of several British AC campaigns – that group is made up of software engineers, modelling engineers “who model the physics of the boat”, computational fluids engineers, and mechanical engineers. “The range of skills required in our design group to execute on these boats is quite remarkable,” he says.
Holroyd sums up his team’s challenge as ‘making the boat fundamentally more efficient’.
“The foil has to carry the weight of the boat,” he says. “If we can do that with just a little bit less drag, then we are going faster, right? Likewise, the sails have to produce a certain amount of side force to keep the boat foiling. If we can do that with a little bit less drag, then, again, we are faster.
“If the stars align, I think we can pull off something exceptional here – but we are going to have to work incredibly hard and be incredibly focused,” Holroyd concludes.
Although there is no hint of stress or panic in the video, having a shell of a boat still needing to undergo the deck modifications must be putting pressure on all aspects of the British campaign. Just how much of a delay has resulted from the looming court case with former sponsor INEOS is impossible to say. The team does now, however, appear to be pressing ahead with the modifications, and there is surely some significance in them releasing this video.
“We have to make our deadlines, we have to get the boat on the water in time and in the condition we need it to be, in order to bring the cycles of sails through, to have systems out there tested and reliable for the racing season next year,” Holroyd says. “Eventually we get to the stage of putting the electrical, hydraulic, and computer systems back into that boat, and then aim to launch at the end of this year.”
It’s worth noting that GB1 is not the only team from AC37 playing catch-up. At another hidden location – perhaps in Switzerland – the Tudor Team Alinghi AC75 is also undergoing a major overhaul to bring it up to code for AC38. In many ways the Swiss campaign has a bigger mountain to climb, having suffered damage to their boat after racing concluded at AC37 and also having broken two masts during the Barcelona campaign.
Meanwhile, the two newcomer teams, Team Australia and America Racing Challenger, are also heads down working on modifying their respective boats – although the Australians have contracted that work out to Emirates Team New Zealand, with the Americans doing the same with American Magic. Neither is expected to be on the water before early 2027.