Alinghi’s big reveal is not so revealing
One of the challenging boats hoping to take the America’s Cup from Team New Zealand has been seen in public for the first time. Well, sort of.
Swiss challenger Alinghi are returning to Cup racing for the first time since losing the Auld Mug in 2010 and have proudly shared the week-long journey of their AC75, Boat One, from their Switzerland base to Barcelona via road and sea last week.
Beneath white sheets, it was the first sighting of any of the six syndicates’ America’s Cup boats that will be sailed once competitive racing in the 37th Cup cycle resumes in Barcelona in August.
However, Team NZ sailing coach Ray Davies said there was nothing they could learn from the photos Alinghi shared on social media, showing their boat wrapped up.
While the shot of its arrival in Barcelona might have looked like an Egyptian mummy on a stretcher, Davies said the covering was standard practice and did enough to disguise the actual shape, hiding any of its technical innovations.
“It’s wrapped in such a way that you can’t tell any of the features,” Davies said.
“You’re allowed to cover it like that while you move it around. \
“There’s not a lot we can get from that,’’ he said.
“When you look at that picture, you see how much effort has gone into a shrouded bit of sheet wrap.”
Next month’s launches of the AC75 Cup boats is an exciting time for sailing fans and anyone connected with the six teams, as years of secrecy and intrigue come to an end.
Each boat is unveiled and starts the scramble from each syndicate, trying to analyse what innovations their rivals have, or don’t have, and who might have the fastest boat.
It’s also a tense moment. The design teams will learn if nearly 100,000 working hours (mostly in secret) have paid off.
Keeping ideas hidden from prying eyes is something teams desperately want to maintain after spending millions of dollars to create the best boat with the best designers and the best engineers available.
“You do as much as you possibly can because it is a design race,” Davies added.
“We’ve been trying to learn as much as we can on the water and with our computer, working on what we think the next innovation is within the rules.”
The images of Alinghi’s AC75, from it being lifted out of their Switzerland base with a crane, hitting the highways and through to its docking in Barcelona, were the first of any Cup boat in the open.
Teams were sailing with the smaller AC40s in last year’s regattas in Vilanova i la Geltrú and Jeddah. The AC75s will be raced for the first time in the next preliminary regatta in Barcelona on August 22-25.
Team NZ’s launch will be in Auckland in April. The same boat will be raced to defend the America’s Cup against the top challenger in October.