SailJuice Blog

Ed Baird explains the match racing moves for America's Cup 33

I went to a match racing presentation at the Alinghi base today (where Richard Branson was getting the royal tour from Ernesto Bertarelli, by the by). Ed Baird offered some excellent insights into the daunting task of match racing these giant multihulls in the 33rd America’s Cup.

WATCH ED BAIRD VIDEOS ON MATCH RACING MOVES HERE….

Alinghi’s helmsman (although he won’t be on the boat for the 33rd) pointed out that the race course is a massive 450 square miles, compared with just 9 square miles for the previous Cup in monohulls.

But there won’t be the same aggressive manoeuvres in the big multis, certainly no repeat of the famous ‘dial down’ which saw the Kiwis cop a penalty from Alinghi in the final race of the 32nd Cup match.

Baird also pointed out that if a crew man falls overboard during the 33rd Match, not only is the team not obliged to pick up the man overboard, but it is also possible for the soggy crewman to be picked up by a chase boat and put back on board for the remainder of the race! Can’t wait to see that one.

Although whether anyone would be in a fit state to keep on sailing is another matter. Not only would the impact of hitting the water at 20-plus knots be a bit of a shock, but it is freezing cold in Valencia right now.

It was also pretty windy in VLC today. We can console ourselves with the fact that even if today had been a race day, nothing would have happened anyway. It was probably too windy for Version 5 boats, let alone these fragile multihulls.

BMW Oracle Racing’s trimaran was swinging around on her moorings in the gusty breeze, although they are growing increasingly confident in the boat’s ability to do this without any harm to the boat. “The boat is moored at the buoy with the wing sail vertical and we’ve seen more than 30 knots,” said Max Sirena (ITA) who is in charge of the wing sail logistics. “It looks scary, but all is good so far.”

The team remains eager to race. The main reason for leaving the wing sail up is so that the boat is ready to go racing early Friday morning. “Over the last couple of weeks we’ve built up heaps of confidence,” mast man and boat director Matthew Mason (NZL) told the media in a Q+A session.

“We’re very satisfied. Logistically this thing (the wing sail) is hard. At one stage we thought we’d be lowering it down all the time, but as of today, we’ve got it up in nearly 35 knots.”

The forecast is for the strong winds to persist into Thursday night. Friday morning brings a significant easing trend. Cold temperatures are expected for several days