Getting it right on the first beat

Alinghi's weather team reveal how they do it...and their secret weapon

You can spend as much money as you like on new sails, tank testing, hulas, unfeasibly long keels and paying top dollar for the world's top designers to help pen your yacht, but if you go the wrong way up the first beat in an America's Cup race then you might as well be sailing a cruising yacht around the race course. Nowhere was this demonstrated with more clarity than when Alinghi chose the right and Team New Zealand the left on the first beat of race three. To recap - because let's fact it it was some time ago this race took place - at one point the Swiss team were 200m ahead and by the top mark the race was all but in the bag for them, despite a valiant come back by the black boat.

Today at the plush pink Halsey Street headquarters of the Alinghi team, Jon Bilger and Dr John Katzfiy presented the component parts that form the Swiss team's weather department.

Jon Bilger, manager of Alinghi's weather team, is also a serious yachtsman, having competed in the 470 at the 1992 Olympic Games and was navigator on Chris Dickson's ultra narrow TAG Heuer in the 1995 America's Cup, while Dr Katzfiy is the nine man weather team's secret weapon. More on him later.

The resources that go into ensuring Ernesto Bertarelli's team hit the start line knowing absolutely which side of the course will pay and what the overall trends will be during the race - are immense.

Months prior to the Louis Vuitton Challenger series the team were already recording weather data from points all over the Hauraki Gulf. This data comes from a variety of sources from their own network of weather stations on the islands in the Hauraki Gulf and along its shore line to a weather buoy in the middle of the Hauraki Gulf (data from this buoy is shared with all teams, but not for some reason, Oracle). This data is compiled to form a picture of the historical weather trends throughout the Hauraki Gulf.

The prevailing wind for the area is southwesterly, but as Bilger explains any sort of conditions are possible on the Hauraki Gulf - very often all within the same day! "The worst conditions are when the wind is from the west or northwest as there are a lot of mountains and rolling hills in the way. Then it is very shifty. The steadiest conditons was when the wind is from the east or north east, or when there is a sea breeze."

One of the more superior pieces of equipment Alinghi use is a wind profiler. This is a 16m by 16m array of antenna that is used to analyse vertical trends in the wind from 500-2,000m. This is similar to a SODAR - a high sophisticated sonic radar device used by many met offices to establish the velocity of the wind at different heights, but their's does not use sound pulses. Unusually this resource Alinghi are sharing with their AC rivals, Team New Zealand.

However where Alinghi have really scored is in exclusively signing up the Australian weather modelling company CSIRO and it contractor Dr John Katzfiy. While most America's Cup campaigns are using American weather models that can be found on the internet, Alinghi are the only team to be using CSIRO's Mesoscale weather modelling package which offers both finer resolution and faster processing than other available weather models. Bilger will not say how detailed the resolution can get, but one imagines fractions of a mile and it is known that the weather model can be run on a PC - many global weather models run by national met offices to establish their forecasts can require super computers to coax a result out of them in any sort of reasonable time.
The weather model effectively number crunches to forecast the conditions expected over the race course in fine detail, including trends and the effects of sea breeze, etc. The model will make predictions for time periods from a day hence to one week. Jon Bilger says that they have been relying considerably more on this data than they have on their historic data records. "It won't give you first shift, but it will give you the trends for the day and that is essential."

Aside from being the interface between the team and his company's top software, Dr Katzfiy - an American who has been living in Australia since 1990 - has also written the software that compiles and, most importantly, displays, the vast amount of weather data that pours into their database from all their land and water-based sources.

Race day

A weather model is run every morning ready to show the sailing team at a briefing at 08.30 every morning (another is run just prior to the start of each race). "We look at trends for the race and the wind speed so that the sailing team can make their sail selection," says Bilger.

Immediately prior to the racing Alinghi will have eight weather boats out on the race course, at the weather mark, at both laylines with others scattered upwind. These have parachute anchors deployed to prevent them moving far. Trends in the wind are recorded on each of these craft and automatically fed to each other's on board computers where the team pour over them looking for trends. The weather boats are also fitted with radar for spotting squalls as signficantly these can either bring wind or suck all the wind off the water, leaving a flat calm - the latter instance occurred prior to racing being cancelled on Sunday.

All this data is also fed to the race boat, although Bilger says they tend to rely on conveying trends in the weather to the afterguard on board by old fashioned voice. All data communication is carried out by radio modems - with encryption so that is cannot be hacked into by the opposing team.

Before the five minute gun goes all the computer and radio link equipment used for receiving weather data on board the race boat is taken off, usually by an unlucky member of the weather team jumping in the water with the gear in a waterproof case.

From then on the sailing team are left to their own devices. The rules are very specific about outside assistance. This obviously excludes having wind spotters up the course, but also prohibits the use of radar. Hence it is up to those in the afterguard to combine what their weather team told them before the start to a heads up approach to wind spotting - often requiring someone with experience and a keen pair of eyes to be hoisted aloft.

They also obviously have their on board wind instruments giving data from the wand at the top of the mast. Even here they go to considerable lengths... "The main thing is trying to get accurate wind direction information because the mast is a big bit of spaghetti basically and twisting around," says Bilger. "Pulling a bit more runner on twists the mast and changes the angle of the mast. So it is a very challenging job to get good stable wind direction. We spent a lot of time trying to get that sorted. When you think about it is quite amazing how accurately they do get it, because the mast is pitching around and twisting..."

Bilger described what happened in the fateful race three.

"It was a very interesting day. There was a split right down the middle of the course. One hour leading up to the start, the left hand side was favoured and it looked like there was going to be more of a left hand shift at the start. The problem was that about 15-20 minutes before the start, it evened up, to be quite an even course. With less than 10 minutes to go, one of our upwind weather boats, 1.5 miles upwind of the top mark spotted the shift to the right. Our young French guy called it immediately. It was the most right we'd seen, so we thought we'd give this call through to the race boat with seven minutes to go." It proved to be a race winning move, enabling Alinghi to bag their third point.

What now?

Those here covering the America's Cup - or trying to cover it - are pulling their hair out that there has been no racing since last Tuesday - there was none today and the race committee have already pulled the plug on tomorrow (Wednesday). "The frustration comes more from the weather more than the decision-making process," says Bilger, when a journalist tried to get his views about Harold Bennett and the race committee's choice to can the racing. "It has not been a good run, hence the situation."

It has been suggested that the schedule of the racing be changed to enable it to start earlier in the morning - but this is not possible because of the TV rights and the way the TV coverage has been scheduled.

Here in Auckland it has been raining on and off all day today. At present a low pressure system is due to swipe New Zealand over the next few days bringing with it strong winds unsuitable for frail America's Cup yachts. The gentlemen in Alinghi's weather team say that their data shows that racing is unlikely to take place until Saturday, but this will be dependent upon the track of the low and the speed at which it moderates.

Despite all this multi-million dollar technology, Bilger admits they still mistakes. It is unusual for them to be completely wrong, but occasionally timings can be out. Today for example: "The easterly 25-35 knots we predicted this afternoon - well, we had that this morning," says Bilger.

Feedback: Is Alinghi's all round package just too good?