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Land Rover BAR strengthened their sailing team with the addition of Xabi Fernández, who has won Olympic gold and silver medals in the 49er as well as three 49er world championships. He sailed with Luna Rossa in the 2013 America’s Cup in San Francisco. Fernandez is also an offshore racer, having finished second in the double-handed non-stop round-the-world Barcelona World Race, sailing with his 49er partner Iker Martinez. In addition, Fernandez has a Volvo Ocean Race podium finish to his credit.
Visitors to Land Rover BAR’s headquarters can visit their Education Centre, called “The Tech Deck.” Among the 16 exhibits and STEM modules, they can see the hull and part of the crossbeam from T2, the team’s second “AC45X” test boat. The rules for the current America’s Cup cycle allow each team to build an unlimited number of test boats, and there is virtually no limit to the modifications that can be made and no rule on what constitutes a “new boat” rather than a “modified boat.” So now T2 has been retired, and is on display for visitors to Portsmouth. Their T1 boat has the same dimensions and layout as a one-design AC45F. Boat T3 is their current test boat and the launch of T4 is rumoured to be imminent.
Nine foiling GC32’s sailed 19 races over four days on Italy’s Lake Garda.
Three America’s Cup teams went racing this past weekend on Italy’s Lake Garda in a fleet of nine boats in the GC32 Series. Not surprisingly, Franck Cammas and his Groupama Team France crew won the event, sailing under the banner of their America’s Cup sponsor Norauto. Cammas and Groupama Team France have been using the GC32 as their training and test boat in preparation for the America’s Cup. Artemis Racing had Nathan Outteridge, Iain Percy, Luke Parkinson and Christian Kamp sailing with young Swedish helmsman Gustav Petersson under team owner Torbjörn Törnqvist’s Gunvor label. Emirates Team New Zealand supports Switzerland’s Team Tilt, which will have an entry in the 2017 Red Bull Youth America’s Cup, and ETNZ skipper Glenn Ashby was on board trimming the wing and handling tactics. Team Tilt set the new speed record for the GC32 at 39.7 knots. And, like the America’s Cup, the GC32 series has its own connections European nobility – Pierre Casiraghi, skipper of “Malizia” from the Yacht Club de Monaco is the son of Monaco’s Princess Caroline.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oimjym2FRtg
The systems for daggerboard control on the AC Class race boats will be extremely sophisticated. All the teams will need time to master the complexity. In 2013, Oracle Team USA won Race 4, their first victory, in spite of a crew error with the daggerboard controls. Eliminating errors like this will be a key to success in Bermuda in 2017. In this video, listen as Artemis helmsman Nathan Outeridge explains what happened.
America’s Cup Race 4 Gate 2 US board error
Lorient, France is the the home of Groupama Team France. Skipper Franck Cammas prepared here for his winning Volvo Ocean Race campaign and for his successful 2010 record-setting non-stop circumnavigation to take the Jules Verne Trophy. By the way, the navigator on board Groupama 3 for that record-setting run was Stan Honey, who led the development of the LiveLine augmented reality graphics for the the ACTV broadcasts. And, Cammas’s record was broken in 2012 by Banque Populaire, skippered by Artemis Racing’s Loïck Peyron.
Even with the smallest budget in this America’s Cup cycle, Franck Cammas and Team France are a force to be reckoned with. Cammas is just as ferocious a competitor as the other skippers in this America’s Cup cycle. Don’t be surprised to see Team France in the semi-finals of the Challenger Playoffs in June 2017.