The final piece of the 37th America’s Cup training jigsaw fell into place with the initial launch and tow-test shakedown of the INEOS Britannia LEQ12, ‘T6’, out in the harbour at Mallorca.
The British team tentatively took to the water for a first outing, shorn of the rig or the tow-rig that we saw at the christening ceremony a few weeks back.
Looking radical and angular, the steel grey hull replete with sponsor logos, almost blended into the sea with a low freeboard accentuated by the wave-piercing bow.
In total, INEOS Britannia did four foiling runs under tow on day 1 in almost perfect conditions in the afternoon with the wind dying off to less than 5 knots.
Ben Cornish and Giles Scott shared the alternate trench steering positions whilst Luke Parkinson and Bleddyn Mon handled the flight controls and systems checks – they certainly looked very much on their ‘A-Game’ with assured flight and a lot of boxes ticked off on a very rewarding session.
After a long tow across the Bay to the flatter waters off the beach at Magaluf the team made their run at speed at 12:40 quickly accelerating from eight knots up to around 18 knots when the boat took assuredly to the air. Top speed on the around three-minute run was an estimated 18 knots.
The second run began at 12:50, lasted a similar time, and resulted in almost estimated identical take off and top speeds.
Run number three, shortly after, lasted almost seven minutes, when after taking off at 17 knots, T6 hit an estimated top speed of 20 knots.
What appeared to be an attempt at a fourth run saw T6 pop up high on to the foils and down again three or four times before the run was ultimately abandoned.
INEOS Britannia have made no secret of the fact that T6 is a highly technical testing platform, initiated to validate the tools and software that the design team will be using to confirm the final configuration of their one-build AC75 for use in Barcelona at the America’s Cup in 2024.
Giles Scott, who is Head of Sailing now for INEOS Britannia, commented . . .
“It was really a shake-down tow-testing day for us, systems checks of a lot of different areas: chase boat comms, data links and then some of the systems on the yacht itself.”
And he went on . . .
“There was an awful lot of de-bugging going on, so we had some of the hydro and electronic guys and a lot of the guys that are dialled into the yacht both ashore and back at Brackley (the Mercedes-AMG F1 Applied Science HQ in the UK) looking into the various parts of the yacht.”
“It’s good to get the boat out of the shed, get it out on the water and do a bit of foiling. It’s a really positive day for the team. There’s been a lot of hard work going in to getting T6 up and running and for sure today is a good step in the direction we want to push it along.”
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