With the AC75s of Emirates Team New Zealand and INEOS Britannia tucked in their sheds getting final nips and tucks ahead of this weekend’s start to the Louis Vuitton 37th America’s Cup all was quiet along the waterfront. And it would have been easy to miss the simmering excitement at Barcelona’s Port Olimpic if were not for the boisterous arrivals of the chase boats of Luna Rossa Prada Pirelli and American Magic, packed full of team members to spur the women of the Puig Women’s America’s Cup as they wait to dock out for one final day of qualification races.
Berthed in order of the rankings, at one end of the quay are the sailors, friends and families of INEOS Britannia’s Athena Pathway sailors in their pole-position parking spot. Next to them, the sailors of Alinghi Red Bull Racing team, then Luna Rossa Prada Pirelli, Emirates Team New Zealand and Orient Express Racing Team. At pit row’s end is the AC40 of the New York YC’s American Magic.
Helena Scutt, a designer with New York YC challenge, darts past with a camera and a roll of tape, which she stows on the chase boat. She’s an alternate, and today will be watching and analyzing as the American women sail four races to dig themselves out of the basement and into the top three of the Group A fleet.
Group A are teams associated with the Cup teams and Group B are the “invited” teams. They’ve already completed their qualifying races for the Semi Final, with Swedish Challenge Women’s Team Powered by Artemis, Jajo Team Dutchsail, and the locals of SailTeam BCN making the cut after a few spectacularly breezy races.
Scutt’s adivce for the team today is simple: “Don’t worry too much about the points, if we sail the boat well it will show,” she says. “It’s about mastering our own boat before worrying about what other people are doing.”
Success will come, she assures me. It will be a matter of “heads out of the boat,” she says. “Keeping it simple and looking for pressure. You can’t worry about the shifts. It’s just about staying in the breeze and on the foils.”
While the team could have warmed up with a few laps on the simulator, today, Scutt says, starboard helmswoman Erika Reineke eschewed the additional screen time. “Erika didn’t want to sim this morning because she wanted to be head-out-of-the-boat,” Scutt says, “she just wanted to not get too locked in on the screen.”
When it comes to AC40 racing, there’s plenty the simulator can’t do and that includes acclimating one’s cranial settings to recent updates to the AC40’s autopilot software. Emirates Team New Zealand writes all the autopilot software, Scutt says, while the helms are adjusting the boat’s trim, its pitch, the depth of the foils and their cant angle. “Essentially, you input what you want and the autopilot achieves that,” Scutt says. The autopilot update came about a month ago, toward the end of their training period, so all the teams are still adapting to it.
“In order to keep the rudder immersed a certain amount to prevent losing it, if it detects that the rudder is—it used to be less than 300mm of immersion—it kicks the rudder and sinks the stern so you have more of a bow-up trim. If you have a combination of too much ride height and leeward heel it, the geometry changes and [the autopilot] kicks the rudder. They changed it to 500mm of immersion so the kicks are happening more often. Now you’re bow-up and it forces a reset, so you have to ease sails and get settled again.”
As Scutt explains the intricacies of the autopilot software, the chase boats arrive into the marina with a cacophony of horns and music, an impromptu postponement harbor parade of sorts. Onboard American Magic’s chase, rap music is booming. The Italians follow, waving the red-white-and green, which stirs the Italian camp into a flag-waving volley.
The American Magic sailors dash out to the bow of the AC40 to reciprocate the celebration. Port helmswoman Francesca Clapcich sprints out to the bow and dances on the foredeck to Shania Twain’s “Man! I Feel Like a Woman!” ba-bop-ba-da-bop…let’s go girls…” and then to Lenny Kravitz’s “American Woman,” appropriate tunes, not just for the Magic sailors, but for the two dozen females whose skills, determination and patience have earned them a spotlight on sailing’s biggest stage.
While this gathering feels more like a side-stage gig to the Cup itself, the excitement is as palpable as it should be. This is historic stuff in a sport that’s long been skewed male, and as they peel off the dock and turn to the racecourse one at a time, each and everyone one of them knows it. Smiles and hand hearts say it all.
“It’s really cool, and hopefully they [America’s Cup organizers] keep it rolling next time,” says American Magic coach Charlie Ogletree. “I can’t see them going backward.”
We’re interrupted by the arrival of legendary hardware maven and sailing Hall of Famer Peter Harken who’s out wandering the scene. He agrees it’s very cool and he’s been enjoying watching it from the Barcelona beachside condo where he’s been posted up for a while.
Forty minutes or so later, these six Group A teams are on the America’s Cup racecourse, foiling into lumpy swells in winds just barely strong enough to get and keep the AC40s on their skinny foils. These boats are difficult enough to handle in marginal winds, but the big swells make every hard turn of the steering wheels a 50-50 proposition.
The women of American Magic are quick to follow the day’s plan: have a good start, get the first shift and go from there. It’s basic stuff, but to get out of the basement and make the Semi Final cut, requires at least one race win and a couple of top finishes. Beyond that, all they can do is let the fleet sort itself out.
With a well-timed approach, Reineke, the starboard helmswoman and Fort Lauderdale’s ILCA 6 Olympian, is cracking the line, on time and with plenty of pace. It’s a great start in the middle of the line. The women of Emirates Team New Zealand are a touch late to the line, but have a better speed build and are immediately advanced on the Americans, positioned to leeward.
Approaching the left boundary, Reineke and her starboard trimmer, Olympic Mixed 470 sailor Louisa Nordstrom, drop the foil and turn the steering wheel, and then pass the responsibility to the port-side pair of Clapcich and Sara Stone. With their foiling tack complete, all looks perfect as they accelerate out of the tack and straight into the waves on port, flying up the course and momentarily into second place.
“Our priority was the start,” Clapcich says when we meet outside the Media Mixed Zone after racing, “because we’ve been missing quite a lot, and I definitely can take that on me as I’m on port and responsible for getting all the pre-starts set up for the last tack. So, I didn’t deliver the first day of racing, and that was really high in my priority, to get back into our good pattern, getting out of the line fast.”
The New Zealanders, however, have a jump on the fleet, as do the Brits. The Kiwis are first through the windward gate and streak down the run with what could be—and should be—a runaway win.
But a failed layline jibe at the bottom corner of the course has the Kiwis bobbing. The race is wide open.
INEOS’s Athena Pathway says, thank you very much as they temporarily snatch on final approach to the leeward gate. But in a blink the Brits are off the foils too and doing the displacement foredeck dance. Now streaking down the middle of the course with a straight shot and through the gate first is Alinghi Red Bull Racing’s squad.
Meanwhile, a few teams at the back of the fleet, including American Magic, are linking jibes and steaming down the racecourse too. American Magic sails past the Kiwis to round third through the gate, a position they will hold to the finish of a race that is eventually shortened to three legs. With a third, American Magic finally pockets valuable points, but they remain at the bottom of the Group A standings. Alinghi Red Bull Racing’s win makes it mathematically more difficult for the Americans.
“We never gave up,” Clapchic says. “Even before the start, we were really focused on it being us and the boat. We knew that it was a really open race and anybody could win so we stayed really focused on our own boat and tried to make smart decisions on maneuvers. It’s a bummer for us that Alinghi won, but we cannot control what other boats do.”
With this fifth qualifying race in the books, there’s a pause for the next but what wind there is fading fast. And then comes the wait. And more waiting until the race committee calls it quits for the day. The Swiss are content with a win.
“Today was one of the best days of my life,” Alinghi Red Bull Racing’s port helmswoman Alexandra Stalder says after racing. “Winning a race in the Cup is something special, so I’m super happy. But we’re not yet confirmed for the next round, so we have to fight for these last points. Tonight is an important night—we have to sleep well and be ready for tomorrow.”
There are only three remaining races to determine the final pecking order, and tomorrow morning at Port Olimpic will, no doubt, have a familiar feel to it. With a good night’s sleep and another raucous repeat send off from Port Olimpic the fleet will be straight into a race-packed day on Friday October 11 with races for both A and B groups. Should the wind cooperate, of course.
