Francesco Bruni back on one hull

Luna Rossa's AC72 tactician contemplates the America's Cup

Francesco Bruni, Italian Olympian (Laser, 49er and Star), and most recently Chris Draper's tactician on the Luna Rossa AC72 is in Bermuda this week competing at the Alpari World Match Racing Tour's Argo Group Gold Cup.

Tthe ancient long keel International One Designs used at the competition are a far cry from the wing-powered foil assisted catamarans he has been used to over the last year. But nonetheless Bruni is here fielding with Luna Rossa crew, all of whom were on board the Italian AC72 in San Francisco, including Spanish 49er Olympic medallist turned round the world sailor, Xabi Fernandez, Britain’s own son Nick Hutton and Pierluigi de Felice.

With Luna Rossa Team Principal Patrizio Bertelli indicating his desire to press ahead with a campaign for the 35th America’s Cup, it makes sense to keep the staff sharp – hence the Italian team’s presence in Bermuda, something they decided upon soon after they lost in the Louis Vuitton Cup final to Emirates Team New Zealand.

“Match racing is always going to be part of the America’s Cup, regardless of the type of boats you sail in,” argues Bruni. “Obviously the last America’s Cup didn’t give a lot of opportunity for boat-on-boat, hard match racing, but there were still some interesting moments. I think if two boats have similar speeds, then the match racing side is important, regardless of if they do 6 knots or 36 knots.”

While Argo Group Gold Cup is Ben Ainslie's first regatta since winning the America’s Cup, Luna Rossa's earlier depart from San Francisco allowed Bruni time to shoehorn in some regattas back in Europe. He was back with the Azzurra TP52 for the final 52 Super Series event in Porto Cervo and then sidled down the road to the Melges 32 Worlds where he was sailing with Deneen Demourkas on Groovederci. This was the first time Bruni had been initiated into the Groovederci camp and he says he was pleased that he managed to negotiate Mrs Demourkas to a third place overall in this highly competitive fleet. Immediately before coming to Bermuda he was racing at the Voiles de St Tropez on the Loro Piana IMS maxi My Song.

So after a year’s break from monohulls, did it take a while to get back into it? “Yes, it took a little bit of time to get used to the angles again and the very small differences in performance, but I have done it for enough years that it came back pretty quickly. I have done much more monohull sailing that multihull sailing.”

He and the Luna Rossa crew also had a short match racing practice session with Simone Ferrarese the week before Les Voiles. “Match racing is something that will always be interesting for me. I always have fun doing it and obviously I feel a little bit rusty now because I haven’t been doing it for a long time, I'm sure it will came back quickly for me.”

As to whether a year spent racing 40+ knot foiling wing-powered AC72 catamarans makes all other yachts feel dull, Bruni disagrees. “The AC72s are obviously great for speed, and racing-wise I think that Oracle Team USA and Emirates Team NZ had some fun for sure, but when we sailed Team NZ or Artemis, the speed difference was such that it is fun for the first and second days and then it got a bit boring as well - that is my personal opinion of course. If you are a tactician or a sportsman, a lot comes down to how close the game is. It was good against Artemis, but not against Team NZ - tactically there wasn’t a lot to discover around the race track.”

For tacticians, the options are obviously very different with more choice available on slower monohulls. “You can do a double tack and many other things not possible with the catamaran," Bruni continues. "So it is slower, but still very interesting. In the TP52s we were very close with Quantum Racing and Rán and it always came down to the last race. And with the Melges 32 every race was about 1mm here or there.”

As to the America’s Cup competition itself, Bruni says he was rooting for Emirates Team New Zealand, which was clearly unable to up its game during the main event to the same degree as Oracle Team USA managed. “Particularly over one period of the regatta that was a trend for sure," agrees Bruni. "There was one day when the improvement was enormous. For sure they did some modifications and I don’t know exactly what there were. There was the bowsprit for sure, but there was something on the foils also. It would be interesting to know if they had a system [for automatically controlling the rake of the daggerboards]. Who knows? The rumour is very strong that they had that. The huge difference was the stability foiling upwind and they could have only got that with a new system. It is not something you learn from one day to another otherwise. But good for them – it was impressive work.”

Looking forward to the 35th America’s Cup, Bruni says the highest priority is get more teams challenging. “Obviously a smaller budget, but they have to do everything possible to cut costs.”

Bruni reckons this means a smaller boat, but in particular the box rule becoming a lot, lot tighter. “You cannot have a 1m wider or smaller boat. The differences between the boats should be millimetres. Design has always been part of the America’s Cup, and I think it should always be, but it shouldn’t be the main driving part.

“They could also make some parts one design, like the wing or the hulls. Then you can only play with the boards and the rudders, which makes much more sense. You can spend a lot more time doing that and you won’t need 50 designers. Also if you get it wrong you are going to be 0.5% slower than another team, not as much as now.”

While traditionally Patrizio Bertelli has always been slow to reveal his hand when it comes to his America’s Cup campaigns, on this occasion he has come forward uncharacteristically early. Had Emirates Team New Zealand won the 34th America’s Cup, it is little secret that the Italian team was lining up to be the Kiwi’s Challenger of Record.

Bruni says that the plan going into the 34th America’s Cup always to go for two campaigns. “We said from day one that we were too far behind and that the whole first campaign was being done to build a team in order to be competitive for the next one.”

As we wait for Oracle Team USA and the Hamilton Island Sailing Club to conjure up the Protocol for the 35th America’s Cup, Luna Rossa is packing up in San Francisco and moving back to Italy.

Inevitably part of the team, both on the sailing side and in the design office, will stay and some will change based on their experience from the 34th AC. Bruni says that Bertelli and Luna Rossa skipper Max Sirena are working on this now. As he observes: “Right now is a very important moment of the campaign.” While Bruni himself for example isn’t official yet under contract with the team, he believes he is reasonably confident of his future with them.

He says that in San Francisco, he and Chris Draper, both former 49er sailors, had a good relationship. “I learned a lot from him about multihulls. He was our multihull expert following his experience with the AC45s with Team Korea and with the Extreme 40s. I really have a lot to gratitude to him for the big first steps he gave to the team in this respect. And he learned from my side about match racing and big boats - I think he hadn’t been on a big yacht before. We learned a lot from each other and we never had problems - it was really good. I don’t know if he will be part of the team or not going forwards, but then nobody has a contract yet and is 100% sure. It would be good to have him again.”

Saying this Bruni admits he would like to have the opportunity to helm, but adds that at the moment it is unclear if Patrizio Bertelli wants an Italian helmsman or not for the 35th America's Cup and if there will be another selection (as there was prior to the 34th America’s Cup, which Draper obviously won). “I am happy to cover any role, helmsman, tactician, etc. I’d like to do what is best for the team, not what is best for me. I was really happy with how things went on Luna Rossa this time. We were a small team compared to the others, starting one year later than everyone else, but we did some good things. Our campaign was well run and achieved what we wanted it to achieve.”

However with a one boat campaign, that was a copy of the New Zealand team’s Mk1 effort, Luna Rossa was always going to struggle to be competitive. “The hulls were a little bit different and there were lots of small areas of development, like different boards and rudders. It wasn’t just one thing. But I know that our performance in one year - from day one to the first race of the LVC - went up every day. To have one extra year would have been huge compared to another campaign. It was the same for Oracle. In two weeks you saw them get five knots faster.”

From here, Bruni expects Oracle to revitalise the AC45s in some form, but hopes that this time they will hold more racing in them. “Last time they did three or four events each year. They could put the AC45s into a foiling configuration and do a circuit with them. But it has to be  more regular. They ended up being very expensive those events before."

Bruni was supposed to have been part of an Italian C-Class catamaran campaign, however he says that this fell by the wayside because of funding. The sponsor that they had, bailed, and he says he was unable to work on finding another because of his Luna Rossa commitments. However he watched the Little America’s Cup racing faithfully every day. “Cammas was good in all condtions. It was a good event and it was weird to see the old strong teams, like the Canadians and Americans struggling.”