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It looks like the sponsorship leaderboard has been shuffled. Official Timekeeper and sponsor Bremont no longer appears on the ACEA “Partners” web page. And, they are gone from Oracle’s boat, too. Their America’s Cup Collection watches are still on offer on their web page.
Some flat black paint covers the Bremont logo in the photo above. An earlier photo, below, still had the logo.
In spite of breathless reports which explain that the winner of a race on Sunday scores 20 points, it won’t be so easy for any of the teams to move up the leaderboard. Consider this: If the weather cooperates and all races are sailed, the most one team can improve over another is 45 points. And this would mean one team wins every race, scoring a total of 90 points for the regatta, while the other team comes in last in every race, scoring 45. I give a full explanation of the standings here. Short version: Land Rover BAR is in a strong position to win the series and take the two bonus points. Oracle and Team New Zealand will be battling for second place and the remaining bonus point.
In this video, sailing team manager Tom Slingsby credits wing trimmer Tom Johnson with keeping the boat from capsizing last week. Click the photo to play the video. Remember that TJ was also doing wing trim when they did capsize back in March.
Look at the starboard hull! After the nosedive, the cockpits are completely swamped. Doing this in a race next year will lose a lot of distance, waiting for the cockpits to drain! The rule allows drains of 0.01 m2 in area for each cubic meter of volume.
On 26 October the wing on Team Japan’s AC45x test boat broke apart while training in over 20 knots of wind. The lower forward corner of the trailing element – the flap of the wing – gave way and then the entire lower flap segment tore loose. Click the photo to watch the short video. If you stop the video at about four seconds, you can see where the breakage occurs. The wing trim line was holding the lower trailing corner of the wing (equivalent to the clew on a soft mainsail) and the rest of the flap simply blew apart. No one was injured and the team was back out sailing a few days later using their “AC45x” wing, which has a different shape. The wing that broke was their “AC50” wing, which meets the design rule to be used on their race boat next year. I pointed out the difference in shape with photos in this earlier article.
SoftBank Team Japan “hooks” Oracle in the pre-start. Click image to watch the video.
The three Bermuda-based teams, Artemis Racing, SoftBank Team Japan and Oracle Team USA held a series of practice races on the Great Sound, using their AC45X test boats. There were lots of lead changes, but these came mostly from mistakes – boats dropping off their foils when gybing or tacking. We can assume that by next May, when the round robin America’s Cup Qualifiers begin, that all the teams will be making fewer mistakes. This was match racing, and we did get to see some traditional match race tactics. In this short video during a pre-start we see Team Japan hook Oracle, luff them head to wind and win the start.