All over?

BMW Oracle Racing's solid wing sail tri proves itself a weapon with a day of racing finally in at the 33rd America's Cup

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Finally after more than two and a half years of anticipation, the two most futuristic boats in yachting and their two arch-rival team principles came together on their third attempt for the first race of the 33rd America’s Cup.

The start drew gasps from those watching. After much talk of safety and in particular a skewing of the start line - that was supposed to allow the port entry boat to cross ahead of the starboard entry - so James Spithill dropped a cog and swooped the BMW Oracle Racing tri past the committee boat at full tilt on one hull as the Alinghi cat, with Ernesto Bertarelli at the helm, seemed to lumber in more tentatively, their crew unexpectedly forced into a dial up. Ernesto Bertarelli was a little late turning up into the wind, the two boats coming to a stand still in a dial up – the manoeuvre the skewed line was solely there to prevent. Unfortunately for the Swiss, they were judged by the umpires to have been too late in their manoeuvre and received a penalty for failing to keep clear of the starboard tack tri. It was a dramatic and decisive round one to BMW Oracle Racing in a move that James Spithill later said he’d been planning for some time.

However Larry Ellison’s team were unable to consolidate their plan. They remained in irons for several minutes and as they came to sheet on, Spithill later admitted that they had an issue with a winch on board: “There was a small problem engaging one of the winches, but the real problem was earlier - and my fault - it was getting too close and too far forward on Alinghi. I thought Alinghi did a very very good job to get out of a tough position.”

He added: “We had a hard time actually slowing the boat going head to wind. We were in a pretty controlling position there, but as time went on we got ourselves stuck in irons.”

As the tri remained dead in the water, this allowed the Swiss to peel off on starboard and round the American team’s three transoms. Perhaps Brad Butterworth, the veteran skipper/tactician on Alinghi 5, hadn’t realised that BMW was in trouble as in retrospect an opportunity was missed to plant a penalty on BMW as they were dead in the water, cancelling out their own. Instead the Swiss cat forged off on port out to the right and it wasn’t until 1:27 after the gun that the American tri was able to peel off on port, duck back behind the line and finally start.

The start was as good as it got for the Swiss. The black and white trimaran powered upwind in hot pursuit. With her spine system supposedly allowing her to have better rig tension, Alinghi 5 was going well upwind initially in the 6-8 knot conditions, but she was roundly out-classed by the USA tri which were on average sailing a knot faster.

Bertarelli later said when asked if he wished they had more sail area, that they had been struggling on the beat in the building breeze. “Actually we had too much sail area for the most part of the race. We did not have the set-up we would have liked to have. There was a bit more wind than we expected. I’m not sure that more sail area would have made much of a difference. I think what it shows is that the wing is quite versatile in many different conditions.”

Just 14-15 minutes into the very long dive out to the right, BMW Oracle Racing had drawn level and was sailing higher. With the breeze building, around this time both boats changed down – the tri furling their genoa and going it under wingsail alone, as rather impressively Alinghi changed down while still flying their hull. At this point BMW Oracle looked relatively slow, merely matching the pace of Alinghi and converged down on to her line.

As James Spithill explained afterwards: “With any sail change like that you are always going to lose some ground. Not only that, but when you change the configuration like that it is going to take some time to get set up again. It took us a little time to get re-set up with the wing only and balance the boat up.” He added that it was one of the most difficult days of sailing they had done in the boat. “it was very very shifty and very very puffy. So the boat speed team on board did a very nice job.”

The Swiss put in an early tack to get ‘out of phase’, but BMW Oracle Racing got into the groove again and surged to round the top mark with a 3:21 lead.

At this point there remained concern among the American team. Would the cat outpace them on the run, potentially one of their stronger points of sail, they worried? Would their boat hold together until the finish? In fact the USA tri surprised many by pulling out even more on the run, sailing both faster and deeper under their big, board-flat genniker.

So the long and short of it is that the BMW Oracle Racing trimaran is a weapon and this many attribute to the solid wing. Throughout the race she looked more powered up to the extent that it crossed our mind that the talk of her weight being more than the Swiss cat might be nonsense. In particular despite the puffy conditions she looked incredibly comfortable on the water – her centre hull rarely touching down – while Alinghi didn’t.

As Bertarelli confirmed: “The fact that the boat was a bit overpowered by the choice of sails, it wasn’t as nice to helm as it is usually is. There was a bit of a swell as well.

“They seem to be able to sail with a lot more heel than we do, quite a lot more stable than we do. Downwind I don’t think we have issue, but it was rather puffy and there were a lot of puffs and shifts, which is why you saw the boat respond as you did on occasion. “

Brad Butterworth commented: “I think the boats are moded differently. We are looking for more lighter breezes. It was interesting how well we went up the breeze when things got sorted out. They showed a lot of commitment to sailing the modes that they are used to sailing, pulling their jib down when they were right beside us and furling it up and losing a bit of ground and pulling it out again a bit further up the beat when they felt a bit more comfortable.”

He added that at the start they had seen six knots and at the weather mark 11, but on the beat it had reached 17.5.

BMW Oracle Racing finished covering the 40 mile (as the crow flies) course in just over two and a half hours, just over eight minutes ahead of when Alinghi should have finished after carrying out her penalty turn. Only Alinghi failed to cross the line properly and in the time it took her to head back to the line and finish properly, their delta ended up being 15:28.

Looking at the numbers - reaching the top mark in around 1 hour 30 minutes, BMW’s VMG directly upwind was around 13.8 knots compared to Alinghi’s 13. VMG downwind was around 20 knots for BMW Oracle Racing, compared to 18.18 knots for Alinghi 5.

Larry Ellison was understandably delighted after a nerve-racking day: “From the guys who designed the boat, to the guys who built the boat, to the shore team and the sailing team today, just did a brilliant job and I couldn’t be more proud of them.”

Spithill said that they had also benefitted from the conditions today: “It was a real tricky day with the conditions. We rounded and it was a little bit lighter and then we went down the run we sailed into a little bit more pressure – we had more wind than Alinghi. The boats were being driven a lot today and the heel angles were changing a lot and that’s because it was really really difficult. The hardest thing was to make the calls on the water. The guys were having a hard time.”

Alinghi designer Rolf Vrolijk confirmed Bertarelli’s opinion, that they had struggled for most of the day in the variable conditions.

Most noticeable to us was how locked in the water the tri seemed. She sailed downwind both deeper and substantially fast with her leeward board almost completely down. While this would be potentially very draggy it seemed to pin her to the water causing her to pitch very much less than Alinghi and presumably this drag must have been outweighed by more power through the improved wind flow over the wing.

The conditions certainly didn’t make Ernesto Bertarelli’s helming look particularly flash. As one Olympic Tornado sailor advised us after – if he were Bertarelli’s coach he would tell him to let the wind steer the boat more and generally to minimise steering. However he also said that ultimately Alinghi’s soft sail set-up has have no chance against the American tri’s solid wing sail.

The general feeling among the pundits is that it is all over and BMW Oracle Racing in no small part due to the wing, but also possibly due to the Spithill v Bertarelli factor - this being the BMW Oracle Racing skipper's fourth Cup he has helmed in, having been a professional sailor for most of his life, while Bertarelli hasn’t – although he is certainly an accomplished multihull helmsman. Bertarelli has won Bol d’Ors (admittedly in the fastest boat) but has also repeatedly been at the top of the D35 one design fleet ahead of many of France's most accomplished skippers such as Loick Peyron, Alain Gautier and Franck Cammas. Bertarelli’s weakness is as a match racing helmsman and in today’s start manoeuvre Spithill certainly exploited this. It will be interesting to see who pulls what move in Sunday’s pre-start.

Bertarelli has confirmed that he will be on the helm on Sunday. Equally when we put it to him, Ellison said that he will be on board – he had hoped to be on board today – providing conditions aren’t stupidly light and they have to sail in their ultra-light configuration with minimum crew.

Given that Alinghi has a distinct speed deficit, maybe it would be a smart move for Brad Butterworth to have one of his ‘road to Damascus’ moments with his wind call, sending Alinghi off on a flier or to intensely match race, particularly when BMW Oracle is bareheaded and may lack manoeuvrability (they have a babystay that requires them to furl their headsail, while Alinghi doesn’t have this impediment).

Perhaps Alinghi 5 will be better on Sunday’s reaching course – a triangle of 13 mile legs, including two reaches. They have different sails and boards they can use.
But following their demolition by BMW Oracle Racing, even the potentially large speed changes that can be made on multihulls like this are likely to not be enough to challenge the mighty wing.

As Brad Butterworth jovially put it when our friend Pierre from Valencia Sailing pointedly asked if he thought they had failed in their design work? “What do you want me to say mate? They sailed from behind us to in front of us. Did you see what happened? You can work it out. Today they showed how fast that they can get their boat going. You couldn’t have come off the line in a worse position and wound up in a very strong position. Sitting there, they sail up and around you: that’s speed with an ‘S’.”

At the press conference Bertarelli also made several Freudian slips repeatedly implying that he thought the race on Sunday would be the last.

In the other camp, Russell Coutts praised the wing, but remained cautious as to their success and said there was still a lot of work to do, despite the regatta potentially being over in one more race in two day’s time. “I think they obviously didn’t have their best da,y but as I keep saying I think it is way too early to judge the relative performance of these boats.” He talked of setting up their boat differently for the reaching course of the second Deed of Gift race – including the fitting of a vital piece of equipment a de-icer! Sunday looks set to be every bit as cold out on the water as today with the added bonus of a 20+ knot wind chill factor.

The fact is that yes, if sailing takes place in similar conditions to Sunday, then BMW Oracle Racing have almost certainly bagged the 33rd America's Cup. Realistically at this stage the best chance Alinghi have of pulling their third America’s Cup win out of the hat is if BMW Oracle breaks something vital. And on these boats that is always a very real and present danger.