AC45s @Bermuda 2015: Outteridge & Artemis Champs (+ Live Replay)

All Images Ricardo Pinto / ACEA / Oracle & Sander van der Borch / Artemis – No much pics of TNZ right now, will wait for the Team to publish theirs. ||  In spite of ACEA efforts to block people to actually watch this excellent edition of the Americas Cup World Series on the foilign AC45s, today I was finally able to watch the event  Live through ESPN Play. Quite glad they streamed the ACWS Bermuda stop, as it was a thrill to follow. I woke up early today to see the Pumas win over Ireland, then another great match with Scotland hard to watch loss it in the last minute against Australia and just after I continued watching the AC45s on ESPN, this time on their net Play platform.

What a good day of racing, specially for Artemis, not on the win per se, but on how they achieved it.
Artemis was out of pace in last AC45 events and it seemed TNZ / BAR & Oracle were stealing the show, although I wrote they were my favorites on the great team formed plus the experience not many will ever match after the SF saga and how they continue working hard each day after it , but lately Outteridge and the teams just looked out of trim.

At Bermuda,  Nathan , Percy and entire crew wipe out those thoughts in a blasting performance today that included another quick recovery from an incident where the jury boat front collided them (!) in the pre start of the second race. A dangerous situation for the rib crew mostly as the boat ended below AR AC45 tramp.

On the first race Artemis controlled the rhythm but lost almost over the line against Oracle which came from behind to grab the first bullet of the day.
The second race was delayed on the rib direct hit with Artemis, and the committee didn´t gave AR much time to fix, repair and re attach some broken lines on the King post / dolphin striker structure.
Nevertheless the Swede Team sailors and support crew managed to solve the issues just in time for the start which was dominated by Nathan in such a way that left the other teams wondering what was going on, as Artemis was just drifting  seconds ago trying to reach on time to actually participate in the race, not even thinking to own the 2nd start in such way.

That second race start was the best I’ve seen for any AC fleet racing yet. Artemis went speeding the rest of the course to win the race, showing additional downwind speed. Burling / TNZ finished in second place.
What a great race, try to watch the replay if available somewhere by www.americascup.com.
Edit: Check the Live Replay by CANAL+ embedded below.

For the 3rd and last race of the day Team New Zealand performed as expected emulating their All Blacks counter parts in the RWC and took the win with ease while Artemis was way behind fighting for last place. Deciding again for the favored side of the course gave them the chance to work their downwind foiling speed to finish  just ahead of Oracle who needed to gybe meters from the finish, to end winning the Bermuda series over TNZ by only two points.

One good thing about the Course race today was the downwind finish, clearly the way to go as critical action can happen right there like AR did over Oracle in the 3rd race, and not on the last mark of the past reaching finish Course configuration , where races were defined at that mark and not at the actual finish line as we saw today.

Another thing to remark that I will post this week is how at least these  AC45s ‘F’ (with OD foils designed by Fischer/Prada) keep the upwind floating / downwind foiling mode that the A-Class are displaying right now.,  so I still don´t get what the AC sailors are doing leaving the As behind.
In my view sailing the FPs & F20s plus the As will bring the design teams and the sailors more valuable info and feedback than the super proven & smooth flying Moths.
A reason for might be the new foiling solution I’m expecting to see any day soon more oriented to Kite foils designs but with refined shape optimized for cats.  As if there is an innovation to achieve for this next Cup is optimizing upwind foiling.

In the end more than happy to see Nathan and Artemis doing so well, this win over Burling, his greatest competitor in the AC, 49er & Moth will give him and the rest of Artemis team the needed boost to keep building a project capable of winning the Cup.

Bermuda 2015 Results below – Race & Overall Series Results at https://www.americascup.com/en/results.html
1 Artemis Racing 52
2 Emirates Team New Zealand 50
3 Oracle Team USA 48
4 Land Rover BAR 44
5 SoftBank Team Japan 44
6 Groupama Team France

Video Racing Replay from Sunday:

Voile – America’s Cup World Séries – Regate du… por CANALPLUS