Chalk & Cheese

Andy Rice | February 2, 2010

So now we know. Wing rigs rule. After months of speculation, it wasn’t even close.

I was sitting at the BMW Oracle team base all day next to Peter Lester and Martin Tasker, the TV boys working for the American team.

What about that pre-start! Before the start Alinghi was flying around, looking the nimbler of the two boats in the light airs.

But come start box entry time, BMW Oracle flew into the start box at double speed, James Spithill gunning for Ernesto Bertarelli from the moment the gun fired.

A penalty! Less than a minute into the 33rd America’s Cup. Who could have foreseen that? Who said that multihulls make for dull match racing?

Then the next twist as Spithill, controlling the slow-speed dial up, finds himself stalled above the line as Bertarelli – the wealthy owner – outsmarts the world’s best match racer at his own game. As Spithill commented afterwards: “There is stuff we can do to improve. Obviously downspeed we need some practice!”

I had a chat with Ian Walker, the British Volvo and AC skipper, who had driven up that morning from Mar Menor (where he’s been learning to sail a foiling Moth – pulled off a foiling gybe at this third attempt!) on the off-chance of there being a race today. “How many matches did we have to go through in the last Cup to see a race that good?” he said. “Even I thought it was boring most of the time, and I was racing!”

Today’s race was not boring.

The start was sensational action, but that was not the defining moment of this match. It was the 10 minutes afterwards, when USA crossed the start line more than 600m back from Alinghi, behind and to leeward. As USA climbed up onto one hull, metre by metre the American boat moved forward AND climbed to windward of Alinghi. It was noticeable how much Bertarelli was having to steer A5 to keep the windward hull flying, whereas Spithill was barely turning the wheel. He was in a groove that Bertarelli never seemed to find.

Perhaps downwind would be Alinghi’s redemption. But no. Peter Lester did an off-the-top-of-his-head estimate that BMW was about 6% faster upwind, whereas downwind that figure was more like 16%, maybe more.

It was chalk and cheese. And it was Cheese (Dirk de Ridder) with his hands on the controls of the world’s biggest wing – bigger than any aeroplane wing ever built. A wing that flew like we couldn’t have imagined.

CLICK HERE FOR JAMES SPITHILL’S ADVICE ON HOW TO GET YOURSELF OUT OF A FINE MESS….