By Julie Ash and Peter Lester – NZ Herald
This was never going to be a mission for the faint-hearted. In a game where secrecy is everything, we knew it could get dirty.
Nevertheless, it was our duty to find out what Team New Zealand are up against in SUI100.
Locating the Alinghi boats through the thick haze off the Valencia coast nearly thwarted the spying mission before it began.
You’d think it impossible to lose two giant 24-metre America’s Cup yachts with mainsails the size of jumbo jets’ wings. Well, think again.
But the haze had its advantages. “We’ll use it as camouflage,” the Maxwell Smart impersonator said. The mission started like a trip down memory lane.
With a 12-metre regatta taking place in Valencia, there was dear old KZ7, the boat that got New Zealand through to the challenger series final in 1987. Not far away was Freedom, the 1980 America’s Cup winner. It was all quite moving.
Anyway, no time for reminiscing, we were on a very important mission.
After putting around for what seemed like ages, we saw the bright red spinnakers of Emirates Team New Zealand billowing out in the distance.
Pity it wasn’t our own country’s team we were spying on, at least we would have actually located them.
Just when hope was fading, the haze parted and there they were. SUI91 and SUI100, spinnakers up and powering straight towards us . “Um Maxwell? … “
The next dilemma was to establish which was which. SUI91 did have 91 on it mainsail. But that could have been a trick. We certainly weren’t falling for that. No siree.
But we figured that because tactician Brad Butterworth and helmsman Ed Baird were on the other boat, that was the rocketship. The great SUI100.
Thundering along in extremely light conditions, one of the first things you notice about the Swiss boats is how good looking they are. They glide through the water effortlessly. Team New Zealand boss Grant Dalton always says a beautiful boat is usually a fast one. Alinghi skipper Brad Butterworth always says a faster boat usually wins the America’s Cup.
Like the New Zealand boats, the Swiss pair look like clones of each other. Performance wise they are probably also like the Kiwis boats and are evenly matched. But they are quite different from the New Zealand boats.
The Alinghi hulls are quite U-shaped whereas the New Zealand boats are very slab sided and quite flat across the bottom. U-shape sections tend to be designed for 12 knots or more.
The hull shape of the Team New Zealand boats suggest they’re optimised for between 8-12 knots.
The volume in the Alinghi boats is probably as far forward as Team New Zealand’s, maybe even further because of those U sections.
That equates to more waterline length and stops the bow from pitching up and down.
The Alinghi masts appear to be a couple of hundred millimetres wider than the New Zealand ones at the deck which might give them more stability.
As they eased past it was clear Alinghi’s two gennakers were quite different. One was essentially a deeper sail, the other one was a lighter sail and was smaller in the head. Maybe they were testing.
From our spying position, SUI91 was leading SUI100 downwind.
Then disaster struck for the rocketship. As SUI100 gybed, the spinnaker got caught on a jumper tearing the sail in two.
What we suspect was SUI91 rounded the mark well ahead.
We didn’t really see the boats upwind too much because the Swiss, who had clearly clicked onto the fact they were being followed – or more likely, wanted to evaluate performance – aborted the race.
But from what we saw SUI100 is probably not going to lean over much, unlike the narrow NZL92 which heels over so much at times it looks like it’s going to roll over.
It looks like SUI100 was using a lot of waterline length. More waterline length normally equates to more boat speed. Short boats don’t go that fast, long boats do.
When NZL92 heels over it picks up a lot of waterline length. The waterline length on the Kiwi and Swiss boats look about the same.
Alinghi’s masts look good. They look pretty stiff and are very detailed in terms of spreader attachments and end cup fittings where the rods go through. It looks like they’ve put lots of thought into reducing windage with every piece of their rig.
It was hard to tell if Alinghi’s rigs were twisting any more than the Kiwi rigs.
The Swiss rigs have three spreaders as opposed to Team New Zealand’s four. It probably means their masts are thicker in section than the Kiwi ones, especially around the point where the forestay connects at the top. The trade off for fewer spreaders is that you have to have bigger sections and bigger rods. It means less drag on the mast, but then you need more weight in the rig to maintain strength.
On this occasion the Swiss were also sailing with jumpers on their rigs. They also have jumper-less rigs.
Alinghi’s sails also looked impressive in terms of the construction, the layout of the fibres and attention to detail.
Feeling brave, we eased our way over towards SUI100. We were so close we could almost have had a yarn with Butterworth while he sat on the side having a feed.
Our mission was to check out where the shrouds connect to the deck. The shrouds are the cables or rods which support the mast sideways.
Rumour has it the Swiss have engineered a way to connect the forces of their rig to their keel fin, to help stiffen it during racing. Something which could give them a crucial speed edge.
Where the shrouds connected looked a bit odd. The cables looked like they were going through the deck but it was hard to verify. Because we can’t see what is happening under the deck we will never know.
Just as we were repositioning, an Alinghi tow boat came barrelling towards us, hooked up SUI100 and they were off. “But wait! We’re not finished we just need to see … “
So what did we ascertain from our spying mission?
SUI91 and SUI100 are nice looking boats and quite different from the black boats in hull shape, heel angle, mast.
Like the New Zealand boats Alinghi have paid a lot of attention to detail.
SUI91 and SUI100 appear to be quite even in performance.
But is SUI100 faster than NZL92?
There was nothing to suggest it would be, but until race one we simply won’t know.
June 15, 2007 at 9:33 am |
Hmm, its a shame we have no indicator about how fast NZL 92 is gonna be against Alinghi
June 15, 2007 at 10:31 am |
G’day, Peter. Thanks for the ’spying mission’ de-brief. We now know, “SUI91 and SUI100 are nice looking boats and quite different from the black boats in hull shape, heel angle and mast”. But which design team is more ‘right ‘ than the other?
Let’s hope ETNZ can sail in her optimised wind range for at least some of the races.
Doh! How much BLOODY longer must we wait?!!!!!Cheers, David G.
June 15, 2007 at 10:41 am |
Maybe we can hire Alain Mafart and Dominique Prieur to give SUI-91 & 100 the old “Rainbow Warrior” treatment and problem solved!
But seriously, I am gonna be a bundle of nerves come next week.
Hey David, does it start 1am Saturday morning or Sunday morning? I have seen conflicting reports and with all the time zone differences, I am struggling to figure out which on is right!
June 15, 2007 at 10:43 am |
Jays,
Send me an email to andymena (at) gmail.com and I’ll send you back a PDF with many articles written by important AC personalities, Russell Coutts amongst them, he explains how it is possible to make predictions based on pictures and software, etc. The whole document is brilliant but the article from Russell is a manual of “how to build your own AC campaign” is for me the best bit.
Then you’ll see that we don’t know what both ETNZ and Alinghi know already.
I’ll keep hoping for the right outcome: The Auld Mug back in a glass box at the Squadron headquarters.
June 15, 2007 at 10:45 am |
Race #1 will be starting Sunday 24th 1 am NZ Time
June 15, 2007 at 10:45 am |
Hey Andy – would you be ok with me posting it on here for everyone??
Here is the NZ TV schedule Jays –
http://tvnz.co.nz/view/page/536641/1031731
June 15, 2007 at 10:48 am |
jays,
I just checked on the tvnz wesbite (I hope that they have it correct as they are broadcasting it). Coverage starts at 2335 on Saturday and finished at 0300 on Saturday morning. At the same time as South Africa is playing New Zealand in Durban….. big night
June 15, 2007 at 11:06 am |
You should’ve yelled out “A’hoy there Mr Butterworth, how goes it?”.
Of most interest are the continued gear issues Alinghi are having. Reported breakages to rudders, sails tearing… are these just from simple mistakes? Look forward to when the serious puffing starts and tension is ratcheted up some.
As the region gets deeper into summer – does the wind normally get stronger or should we expect more of the same?
Cheers,
D.
June 15, 2007 at 11:29 am |
G’day Jays. It is confusing alright. Andy is correct. The first race is Saturday June 23 – VALENCIA time, which of course is the early morning of SUNDAY 24, our time.
A bloody good reason for bringing the Cup back to NZ – so we can all get some sleep and let the Europeans sit up all night, eh! Ha, ha. Cheers, David G.
June 15, 2007 at 11:36 am |
Peter,
Not a problem Peter it a very cool sort of special edition of the UK Seahorse magazine with articles from Paul Cayard, Russell Coutts , Tom Schnackeberg among others…
Thing is that i couldn’t find the link where I found that pdf a few months ago… it was completely random how I got to that pdf. I got it searching info about the AC.
I got to rant a bit about the lack of info from the official AC site. The PDF is secured so no one can “copy and paste” the text.
Send me and email and I’ll forward it to you I tell you this document is good.
June 15, 2007 at 11:46 am |
Thanks guys, I thought thats when the time was but be buggered if my poor old brain could make its mind up!!!
Much to my wife’s disgust, we are going to my fathers place (about 100km away) for next weekend so we (he and I) can watch the 1st race together
.
I guess by the end of the1st race, we will know the likely outcome of the whole series.
Once again…
Oh AC God who artin ValeNZia, hallowed by thy name.
Thy kingdom come, please aim BIG GUNS at those b%stards on SUI-100.
June 15, 2007 at 12:00 pm |
damn, i meant Paul, and i wrote peter (twice), sorry about that…
ok. for the rest: finally i found the link.
http://www.seahorse.co.uk/americas/eu/
and click on the download a digital copy of “there is no second”
(i typed the right words in google a few minutes ago)
June 15, 2007 at 3:47 pm |
can’t wait!!
June 15, 2007 at 3:53 pm |
Alinghi seems to be trashing a (relatively) large amount of equipment out practising.
.
If stuff was going wrong for Alinghi, I would normally say that they are just trying to throw the opposition off the scent.
However…..blowing spinnaker after spinnaker and other miscellaneous items is expensive.
While we know good ‘ol money bags aint short of a quid or five, these sort of breakages are beyond “show and tell” and are indicative of perhaps some deeper problems. Only problem really is that they have happened BEFORE the AC and not during. This means that they have a chance to rectify them
I still maintain that giving SUI-100 the old Rainbow Warrior treatment is a possible fallback position in case of emergency
June 15, 2007 at 6:32 pm |
Couldn’t it be that Alinghi is stressing sails and equipment to the limit or in odd situations just to make sure nothing bad happens during the finals?
Do you think that the result of race 1 will be the key to understand who will win the AC?
Or do you expect a closer competition than a 5-0 or 5-1 score?
It seems to me that the top team crews are so good and the boat so optimized that a small edge in boat speed is enough to win… just like in Formula1.
Lukily the wind is still a variable!
Giulio
June 15, 2007 at 7:45 pm |
Hi all, so not long to go now & the suspense is killing me!!
We are currently living in London & the coverage apart from the Sky stuff has been very limited here.
On the current debate of whom has the boat speed I think you defiantly have to rate the Alinghi boat with the advantage. Remember the act just before the L.V series, it seems ages ago but must be taken into account. Alinghi were the only boat that could make significant gains from positions that it found itself in that weren’t ideal. No other boat even looked capable of turning on the speed that these guys had.
Having the knowledge of how Alinghi played it last time in ‘03 you would have to expect that SUI100 is faster. So in my view it will come down to how much TNZ has improved over the LV series & how much quicker SUI100 is than the older SUI91.
My prediction is that NZL92 can now match the speed of SUI91 but SUI100 will be half a generation ahead again. This was also conveyed by Dean Phipps at the Semi final stage of the LV.
So I can’t wait till it all begins as my partner & I had the foresight that TNZ would make the final so we booked our trip months ago.
Go TNZ you beauty!!!!!!
June 15, 2007 at 7:46 pm |
SUI91 and SUI100 are supposedly very close in performance.
June 15, 2007 at 9:30 pm |
I think by having the Acts, any speed advantage that Alinghi had in 2003 may have soaked up by the challengers.
Speculation is high and I am loving all the baseless predictions that people are making.
See you at the start line/
June 15, 2007 at 11:01 pm |
Hi.
In our forum I’ve found a link to this short video regarding Alinghi and Luna Rossa recent training.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Uy2sGkONGM
Giulio
June 16, 2007 at 12:01 am |
Nice find! If Spithill was another half boatlength ahead he could have lee bowed Baird there.
June 16, 2007 at 12:06 am |
I understood that in the second day of practising it was Presti at the helm of Luna Rossa.
But I don’t know when was the video taken.
On valenciasailing there was an interesting report of that.
June 16, 2007 at 2:22 pm |
[...] we have mentioned before, both Team New Zealand yachts seem to be incredibly slab sided, while the Alinghi design is [...]