Alinghi's year without a break in Barcelona: "We will go to the limit to scratch a thousandth"
Alinghi Red Bull Racing is determined to win the America's Cup in 2024. For this reason, it has been the first team to settle in Barcelona, where it has been dedicated to its work for several months now. While the time for the competition arrives (between September and October of next year) both its crew and its engineers will work to win a trophy that was won for the last time in 2007, in Valencia.. Now they are looking for the perfect combination of muscle and technology. If necessary, they will speed up the time to the last second.
«Everything is highly regulated, but it is clear that we will go to the limit to scratch a thousandth of a second. engineers are like that. If they tell us that it has to be there by the 23rd, for example, we ask if in the morning or in the afternoon”, says Nicolás Bailey, responsible for the design of the foils.. «The foil is in charge of making the hull not touch the water, you have to lift all the weight of the boat with the least possible resistance. Once out of the water, you reduce the resistance by 70 or 80%. Anything you can file will mean a huge jump in performance. In addition, it also plays an important role in balance.. You have to design them not only taking resistance into account, but also so that the boat is as manageable and stable as possible”, he explains.
For that, taking into account the rules imposed by Team New Zealand, defender of the trophy, as he confesses, you have to rack your brain a lot. Above all, now that espionage between teams is not only allowed, but is also public and notorious.. “It's fundamental. What has changed in this Copa América is that espionage has become public.. Before, each team had its spies and it was even a bit ridiculous, because you went with your boat, your three motorboats, and then there were five more motorboats from other teams who wanted to take photos.. You have to put the infrastructure in place so that they can spy on you, you have to give interviews about what we have been testing and all of that is public, it is uploaded to YouTube and is common to all the teams”, Bailey points out.
“You Can't Buy Time”
To compete, yes, both technology and the human factor are important. «It is a mixture between engineering and sailors. In the previous campaign the design of the ship completely changed, they went from being catamarans to monohulls and, when a new class starts, the differences are so great that, in a first cycle, all the engineering part, the ship, plays a role very big. For this second cycle, all the designs are converging a lot and more is being played with the details.. I think that we will all have similar boats and that the weight of the sailors will be more important than in the previous season,” he says.. the sailors also work to the limit.
«Normally, a normal training day starts in the gym. There we warm up, do activations and work on mobility. Then we put the boat in the water, the engineers test everything we have on the boat, we test the controls, the communications. Later, we eat, have a short after-meal moment, and then spend five or six hours browsing. At the end, it is time to take the boat out of the water and clean it well, because the salt is not very good for all the equipment we carry, we return it to its hangar, we check that everything is fine and, meanwhile, the sailors and the staff do a debriefing and we prepare for the next day”, says Florian Trüb, crew member of Alinghi Red Bull Racing.
The team tries to have at least one day off, usually on the weekend.. Although, if the weather is good, they also sail. When the wind is too strong, they do not go out and take care of the maintenance of the boat. «There is a saying in the Copa América: you can buy all the equipment you want, hire all the people you want, but what you cannot buy is time.. You never have enough to try everything. That's why there are a lot of people here who work almost every day,” says Florian Trüb.