11:37 AM Fri 12 Mar 2010 GMT
On Thursday, the opening day of the Auckland International Boat Show, Sail-World's America's Cup Editor, Richard Gladwell spoke with James Spithill on the Sail-World stand close to the Halsey Street entrance. In this first part of a two part interview, we cover the opening stanzas of Race 1, of the 33rd America's Cup; alarms on the super multihulls; the areas of strength of USA-17; scariest moments and the mast breakage.
Sail-World: First up, congratulations on winning the America's Cup. Fantastic effort, it was a long 31 months
Spithill: It was a long campaign it was certainly the hardest one I've done, and the main reason for that is that it was one of those ones where the goalposts get moving. You know the end date, so it was very difficult for planning purposes, but also just because of the change to the multihull sailing. Obviously being someone that came predominantly from monohulls - and that was how I was brought up - it was quite a steep learning curve to sail a boat, a multihull, let alone one well over 100 feet with a 70 metre wing.
Sail-World: If we can just run through that first 18-20 minutes of the first race of the 33rd America's Cup. We all saw you come flying around the bow of the Committee Boat with hull flying, looking absolutely superb, and ten nailed Alinghi with that penalty. But suddenly you were on the wrong side of the start line, absolutely stopped dead. What happened?
Spithill: I spoke about it for awhile with the guys before the race; I thought we'd have a good chance of getting a piece of them if we hit that entry well and fully charged up. So we did a good job of that, but probably the biggest thing though was how under-prepared we were for the racing - and probably that applies to both teams. And people are surprised when they hear this, but our first time round a race track was race day one first go, so everything we were doing was cold.
We always had on the list to do practice pre-starting, practice racing, but with a boat like that it's so complex and you have issues etc that it just continually slid to the bottom of the list - to the point where suddenly Race Day 1 was tomorrow. So down speed with the wing, we did a good job to get the penalty, and then we're in a really controlling position. But one of the things with the wing is that we have a fore stay that's always a supporting stay - that we call a baby stay. And, that has to stay on. So any time you tack or jibe or whatever, we have to completely furl up our sails. The other thing with the trimaran is that we took our central hull rudder off, purely thinking boat speed, and when the main hull's in the water when you're sitting head to wind the other two rudders are sort of only just half in if that. And also we just didn't really know how to use the wing down speed, and we were completely stalled. It was one of those ones where we learnt on the day, and we went from being in a pretty controlling position to getting stuck. It wasn't the outcome I was after, that's for sure.
Sail-World: What happened when you were 100metres over the start line, did the wingsail completely stall?
Spithill: We just got a little stalled up; we actually had a little problem with one of the winches, too. We couldn't engage a winch to sheet the front sail on to get out of it. But to be honest, the real problem was at about a minute forty five to go we had the ability just to sheet on, bear away and jibe, and we would have been on time for the race and then fully in control. And it's that classic thing you see in match racing that we just probably got a little bit too greedy, and especially not knowing the boat that well down speed, we just really got stuck there. But also you've got to give credit to the Alinghi guys because they were on the ropes there, and did a pretty good job of getting out of it.
Sail-World: Do you think that Alinghi had worked out the weakness of the wingsail - that when you were stopped and stalled and with a small jib on, it was very hard to get going again?
Spithill: No, I think they were honestly worried about getting too close to us. They were very, very defensive and they set themselves up for that penalty, and even in the other start they were very defensive. I think it was just one of those things that it showed - probably both those situations, them getting the penalty, us getting stuck head to wind with the wing - showed how underprepared the boats were. Well, the teams were for racing. We were completely focussed on boat speed and sailing our boat fast.
Sail-World: Alinghi spun out of that very quickly, do you think that was a factor of the soft sails?
Spithill: No, I think that was just the factor of their boat having less riding moment; being lighter, narrower. Their boat was certainly, manoeuvring-wise, was much better, or rather platform wise was much better because they have both rudders on the water all the time; the boat spins naturally; the bows were out of the water, where with our wave piercing hulls great in a straight line, but then you actually push quite a lot of water, when you're manoeuvring. The wing is good manoeuvring but the complication of the baby stay up the front, the supporting stay, means that you constantly have to furl the jib which takes time. But they're just complex boats. We always knew that they would accelerate better and they would be a bit better at manoeuvring, but once again our focus and the design of the sails - everyone was focussed on having a fast boat.
Sail-World: When you were 650 metres behind at the start of Race 1, what was running throigh your head at that point?
Spithill: (Laughs) It's going to be a long day! No, I knew we'd be strong upwind. We had more righting moment that them and we were clearly flying a hull; we were really starting to depower the boat, so we knew we were going to be strong in that. Straight off the line we got them inside puff to the left. It just so happened that we were able to get inside a little bit and work up and they just started to drop out of it and I knew a 40 mile course is a long way to go, plus they still had the penalty. A penalty in these boats is huge. I don't know the distance but it is massive. In my mind the race was still on, but by no means was I happy about it.
Sail-World: Were you confident knowing where you were at the start of Race 1, that 20 minutes later you would have passed Alinghi?
Spithill: No one really knew. Both teams had their VPP's and I think both teams didn't. It's hard to put all your trust into the VPP. Both teams had surveillance boats out there when the other teams were training. But it's real difficult because the hardest thing to know from the surveillance guys is how much wind's at the top of the mast, especially when you're talking 60 to 70 metre masts. Ultimately, I thought we'd be strong upwind and reaching, and I was really concerned about the downwind, and that was the case (upwind and reaching). But probably the biggest surprise for me was how good we were downwind against them.
Sail-World: It seemed that as soon USA cracked off a little, the wingsail really came into its own, and as we saw on the second leg of race 2, a 300metre lead became a 2000metre lead at the end of the leg, 13 nm later.
Spithill: It's a real fundamental; in any boat, the righting moment as soon as you crack sheets is just King. Plus also to be honest I actually think that with the soft sails we would have been pretty quick as well, but obviously the wing was the weapon. But the biggest surprise for me was downwind.
Sail-World: When we saw you come up alongside Alinghi 20 minutes into Leg 1, of Race 1, and you took off the jib, and then dropped back on Alinghi 5. What was the cause of that - just going through the gears, or something else?
Spithill: That was just going through the gears. With that amount of apparent wind speed and any time you bring guys in off the rail you're losing righting moment, there's more windage, so you are going to take a loss in furling up.
We have to rebalance the boat, the rake has to go forward, so there's quite a lot to go on. That's just a given. But the one thing that you're always worried about with those boats is not overloading them; you've got to be really careful, and we've got the full fibre optic alarm system like what the guys are running out here, in Auckland, on these boats. If you watch the TV you'll hear like a fire alarm noise go off and we've got that pretty much through everything on the trimaran. In both those races we had the boat red-lining, so that's a real balance; you've really got to be careful with that.
Sail-World: So when we hear those alarms go off, what does that mean? Are they set to alarm at 100% and another 5% and something will break, or are they set at 80%, and it is just a 'heads-up'?
Spithill: It all depends on what alarm it is, but when you first launch the boat you obviously have big safety factors. As you start getting closer to the racing and just the mere fact that the boat is being sailed and had more hours on it - you're starting to eat into those safety factors, and then there's certain times during the racing on any boat where you might just pull a runner on a bit tighter because you need to. If someone's rolling over the top of you you might just forget about alarm for a little bit. There's certainly times when we push this boat and really ate into those safety factors.
Sail-World: Jumping through to the start of the second race when Alinghi were claiming that their boat was alarming up and they didn't think it was safe to race, how bad was it for you guys?
Spithill: The thing is the boats alarm up in six knots of wind or less, because as soon as you fly a hull you're at max load - that's max righting moment - so the boats are just as much loaded up in five knots of wind as they are in 20 knots of wind. Obviously we could have raced, and I thought it was a bloody fantastic race too. I'm glad we did.
Sail-World: When we were in Valencia and the second scheduled race day wiped out because of sea conditions and you came into the media conference an told us that you would have been quite happy to race. When do sea conditions get too rough for your boat?
Spithill: Probably the biggest thing is not so much the wind speed in these boats; it's the sea state. Once you start getting up towards three metres then it's hard to slow them down, and the loads go up. But most of it also depends on the wave length. In San Diego we sailed on some big waves, but if the length was long enough it was OK. It's usually the sea state, but for instance on that second race I think the waves were maybe a metre, and I mean it's hard to tell the sailing world that we can't sail on one metre waves.
Sail-World: What was the scariest moment you ever had in that boat?
Spithill: Scariest moment was probably on the mooring one night, actually. The biggest challenge with the wing was the logistics, and there was a couple of nights when there was a lot of wind, and we had a fantastic crew of C-class guys who came in and had a lot of knowledge with wings and they looked after the boat at night because it had to be manned 24 hours.
We had a protocol of what would happen if things started to go bad. Magnus Clark who ran the night watch crew - his last resort was to wake the sailors up, because we had to sail during the day. But he rang me up one morning and I got down there and there was about 4am and it was very windy and I was pretty concerned; the boat was charging around on the mooring. With a boat like that with a wingsail that's one of the cons. There's a lot of upsides to it, but the logistics and looking after it is the challenge.
Sail-World: What about sailing-wise, what was the scariest moment. Did she ever feel like there was a risk of pitchpoling or capsizing?
Spithill: We've pushed the thing a lot, and we've got some big heel angle numbers, but we'd never push it to the point where it was going to be a complete catastrophe or anything, because in the back of your mind its - well, you could really hurt someone. The most important thing is it'll end the campaign, and you've only got one of those boats. It was an interesting sort of mental challenge you had with yourself each day; it was to push the boat as hard as you could, which you had to to make a multihull fast, but also make sure that you got back to the dock. That just made it mentally very tiring throughout the day.
Sail-World: So the worst break you got was dropping the mast in San Diego?
Spithill: Yes, it was when we dropped mast three, which was our big soft sail rig. There were quite a few things that led to that, but we were lucky because in three day's time - or three days after we dropped it, we had planned to put the wing in anyway. But we certainly hadn't planned on taking that mast out of commission; that was going to be a backup mast if the wing didn't work.
So that was an interesting part of the campaign, because we were really relying on the wing and we really had to look after the thing.
(Part 2 follows)
by Richard Gladwell, Sail-World.com
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