America's Cup - Talbot Wilson reports from the Practice Series

by Sail-World on 28 Mar 2017 Bermudan based sailing journalist, Talbot Wilson looks at the first five day practice racing session just concluded in Bermuda, for the Royal Gazette.

All five America’s Cup teams training in Bermuda have wrapped up the first of six “practice racing periods” allowed under the latest changes to the 2017 America’s Cup protocol.

The protocol changes were approved March 16 by the defender, Oracle Team USA and signed by the four challengers in Bermuda.

The amendment was not signed by Team New Zealand who are still practising in isolation in New Zealand.

In multiple races yesterday the cream of the crop still appears to be Oracle Team USA. In the second match of the day, they took the leeward end of the line, led Land Rover BAR around the turning mark and never looked back.

Oracle are showing excellent straight-line speed and are almost flawless in keeping their boat speed up through foiling tacks and gybes.

Oracle, the defender, and challengers Land Rover BAR and Artemis Racing had raced last Wednesday, Friday, Saturday and yesterday. On the final days SoftBank Team Japan and Groupama Team France joined in for their first competitive trials.

Team Japan showed impressive speed in their race against France. They took the leeward end of the starting line for the port tack reach to the midcourse turning mark and headed down wind with a lead of five to seven boat lengths. Japan opened their lead on all legs of the windward-leeward America’s Cup course.

Japan also showed good speed in their race against Artemis, but allowed the Swedish team to take the lead after an apparent gear failure.

All of the teams have only been sailing their AC Class boats for a couple of weeks and all are sure to have some issues with the complicated hydraulic systems used to control sail shape and daggerboard positions.

Team France struggled the most with losses to both Japan and Oracle.

They were off in timing the start in their race with Oracle, with the United States team slowed down on the first leg to give them a chance to make a race of it. Oracle were briefly behind but retook the lead and kept it until the end.

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