What we can expect on 8 February

Alinghi's helm turned coach Ed Baird, talks us through proceedings

Alinghi’s 2007 Cup winning helmsman Ed Baird doesn’t look like he will be have the same role for the 33rd America’s Cup. The odds seem to be on for a combination of Loick Peyron/Alain Gautier and Ernesto Bertarelli to be behind the wheel of the Alinghi 5 maxi-catamaran come race day. However over the last weeks the American former match race world champion, who also proved himself on two hulls by winning the 2008 iShares Cup, has been coaching the Swiss team in the new sport of match racing 100+ft long mega-multihulls.

“I’ve spent a fair amount of time observing and trying to help the guys prepare for race day,” Baird told thedailysail. “There is a lot to think about – the size of the boat, the time it takes to do the manoeuvres, the characteristics of the boats, etc mean that we have to approach the race course in a different way. So I have worked hard at trying to develop some strategies for the guys for positioning and timing and really just trying to make sure we’re prepared.”

In his new role with the team, Baird has now gain a good handle on what the competition might look like come 8 February, when the giant Swiss cat lines up for the first time with the American trimaran with her solid wingsail.

Compared to the 32nd America’s Cup, designed vaguely to be a spectator affair within reasonable distance of the shore, with exclusively short windward-leeward courses with a beat of typically 3.3 miles, the courses in the Deed of Gift match format are very different and very much longer. Race one, states the Deed, will be a windward-leeward with a 20 mile beat. Race two is an equilateral triangle with 13 mile leg, while race three (if it is required in this disappointingly short first to two competition) will be a repeat of race one. All are just once round.

The direction of the roundings and whether the reach in the race two if off to port or starboard will be at the discretion of the Race Committee and will depend upon the wind direction. Racing will start each day, assuming conditions oblige, at 1000 local time.

"The whole race course is going to take up more space than in the past," says Baird. "In the last America’s Cup, the racing area was 3 by 3 miles, or 9 square miles. Now we are looking at a 450 square mile racing area. All of a sudden you are looking at trying to control spectator boats, the shipping interests, so we have to look at a whole different group of rules and situations that might come up.”

So in a northwesterly, which according to meteorologist Roger Badham, is a common wind direction for February in Valencia, the start could be 25 miles offshore, or roughly one third of the way to Ibiza. So the weather mark in both race formats is going to be well beyond the horizon.



The size of the course is certain to lead to some race management challenges. How to set up a weather mark 20 miles away? The wind direction on the line could be significantly different to that at the top mark.

The Sailing Instructions also place constrains upon the conditions that can be raced in, stipulating a maximum wind speed of 15 knots (compared to around 18 for the 32nd AC), oddly at 60m, and a wave height of 1m (a point currently contested by BMW Oracle Racing). Ultimately responsibility lies in the hands of the race committee to decide when to race and fortunately in Harold Bennett and his team they are in good hands, but not even the highly experience Royal New Zealand Yacht Squadron veteran will have faced a challenge like this.

The reason that the wind is being measured at 60m, says Baird, is because the race committee is expecting to receive the masthead wind speed readings from the boats themselves during each race.

“It is going to be much harder for the teams to understand the weather over the entire area and to research what that is doing,” continues Baird (hence why their meteorologist Jon Bilger has got himself a Microlite!) “In the starts in the last Cup we had many races where there was a 5-6 degree wind shift on the windward leg that was critical. If you could sail into that and tack you would win the race. Or there was 1 knot more wind on one side. If you could get there first you would win the race. Now you might find that you get to that shift, but if you sail further it all goes away.”

Another unique feature of the Deed of Gift races is that marks cannot be moved and courses cannot be shortened. The only option a Race Committee has, if there is a dramatic wind shift or conditions start to exceed the limits laid down in the Sis, is to stop the race and restart. If it is marginal and one boat is ahead (as they will be), then this could well lead to some more work for the jurors.

The format of the start is also going to be different and the set-up used for the match racing in the RC44s has been adopted with the marker for the port entry boat downwind of its normal position. The aim of this is to ensure that the port entry crosses the starboard entry boat and there is no dial-up, but Baird also reckons that a by-product of this format is that it provides no real benefit to being starboard entry boat.

"You won’t have the boats aiming at each other at reaching speeds which can be 40 knots in these boats... You don’t want to be trying to pick the time and missing it by half a second to dial up. It’s just too dangerous,” states Baird, who points out this was one point of mutual consent between the teams. “The dial-up won’t happen unless there is some huge shift at the start and if that starts it should be postponed anyway. So what you’ll find is that the boats will cross each other on the first time and then there’ll be a circle in conventional terms and the boats will come back towards the line and try to get their timing right. You’ll still find the luffing, the pushing and the leading back to the line.” Given the speed of the boats, ‘deep into the box’ could be taken to a whole new level. Circling, if such a thing is likely to happen, could take place a mile or more away from the line...

The length of the line again is to be set by the race committee and its length it certain to be longer due to the phenomenal speed of the boats which could very easily be sailing upwind at 25 knots.



Once the race has started Baird says that there will have to be some very rapid decision making by the afterguard. “If you sail for a couple of minutes thinking ‘am I going the right way?’ or ‘is the other way better’, by the time you make a decision the boats could be 2-3km apart and you could already be in different conditions. So it is going to be a very challenge race for the teams.”

Baird expects the racing to be somewhere between that of a conventional boat on boat close proximity monohull match race and a multihull fleet race where often it can be a case choosing one side of the beat and tacking once to lay the mark. With no keels and therefore less ability to keep their way on while going through the wind, multihulls typically require a lot of skill to tack without stopping or going backwards. This is certainly something both teams have mastered, but tacks still remain costly because of the size of the gear, the sails, etc on these boats. “It is going to be fascinating to which how this works.,” says Baird. “The racing, the strategy and the tactics might be a little more simplistic than it has, but controlling the boats and the equipment will be more difficult than it has been in the past. So that combination will make for an interesting race day.

“You are just not going to have these boats overlapped that often. They are all about going fast and they are probably going to have different characteristics of how they go fast - higher/lower slower/faster - they are not going to perform in that really narrow range we are used to seeing in a match race where the boats are overlapped and the crews are talking to each other and ‘discussing’ who has right of way. From that standpoint it is going to be different. From the standpoint of ‘do you stay in touch with the other guy when he tacks away?’ Absolutely!

“Even off the starting line, if you split from opposite ends of the line or even half the line, you are going to be immediately pretty far away from each other and whoever thinks they are ahead is going to tack first and chase down the other guy [to bank their gain]. But you are going to spend a lot of time 1-2km away from each other, even though you feel like you are sailing the same way as the other guy.”

As to whether the crews will be reluctant to manoeuvre Baird says: “Fundamentally the fact that these boats go so fast and they are so efficient with their speeds in a straight line and so inefficient with their ability to turn and re-accelerate – they will do it but it takes 25-30 seconds from the time you start slowing down in your turn until the time you are up to speed again. If you take that 30 seconds going straight ahead, compared to tacking once and tacking twice to come back on to the same angle again...

“And on top of that the fact that wind shifts don’t mean so much any more, because when pressure is such a high premium, your whole way of thinking about the race is a little different. Pressure makes a bigger difference than shift – especially downwind. In cat races we often see a boat come around the weather mark and seems uncatchable, and the boat behind gets a little more breeze, sails lower, same speed and suddenly the boat ahead sails into a little whole and all of a sudden the trailer is ahead.”

Another issue for the afterguards is that it will be very very hard to see if the opposition is on a lift or being knocked. This is firstly because they are likely to be a considerable distance apart, but also because the TWA needs to be aft of the beam before there is any noticeable change in the sheet. Trying to read the trim of a solid wing from any distance away is going to be even harder.

“You can go 30 knots in this direction or 16 knots in that direction without adjusting the sails,” explains Baird. “It is going to be different to look and watch what is going on. There will be more thinking about what you are sailing in and what you are going for to decide how this race is won.”

Our guess is that manoeuvrability will also become a tactic. We suspect that with their solid wing rig, BMW Oracle Racing’s trimaran will be better at turning corners than the Swiss cat and Spithill could use this to his advantage, engaging with Alinghi 5 until they flounder and the tri can sail away.

The first to two format could also change the way teams approach the racing. In this event every race will absolutely count. There can be no mistakes. “In one way you might sail more conservatively. In another way you might sail less conservatively, because it is only one race and you have got to go for it. After the first race, the next one is everything to somebody. In the last Cup we got beaten twice because of our conservative sailing and the lower percentage move won. But then it was alright because you had to win five races. Not this time. If it had been two out of three in the last Cup we would have lost,” states Baird.

A team also will really really not want to get a penalty awarded to them as circling in these boats is “long and painful” as Baird puts it. If a circle does have to be done on the downwind leg then the crews do have the advantage of not having drop their kite/genniker below the gooseneck, as typically required by the match racing rules. This is because both boats have kites on furlers but also because the BMW Oracle Racing tri doesn’t have a goose neck.

The really exciting race of this America’s Cup is certain to be the triangle, for the moments of greatest disaster potential racing these boats is the bear away around the weather mark and reaching. “These boats go upwind really deep downwind without too much trouble,” says Baird. “But somewhere in between there is a big zone of risk and that depends upon the wind speed. If you have 12-14 knots these boats are completely capable of capsizing. [Doing the bear away at the top mark] you have to pay attention with everyone on boards prepared. The sails have to be adjusted in concert with the rudder, and you have to manage where the weight is and the people are and manage the type of turn you do, to keep the boat from putting its nose in.

“When you turn the boat the rudders lift the transom up and that starts the process. It is most efficient to sail fast on one hull, so you are turning the mark, you are lifting with the rudder sticking the bow down, you are accelerated and as you accelerate you get more power because the apparent wind speed builds and the sails get more power and they try to heel you over more. So you have to get to the point where you get down and your righting moment takes over again to accelerate and go down the angle on the downwind leg. But between it is a high risk.”

Roll on 8 February... It's not long now.