Alinghi Red Bull Racing at the America's Cup Preliminary Regatta 1 in Vilanova i La Geltrú - Day 2
by Alinghi Red Bull Racing 17 Sep 2023 08:15 NZST
15-17 September 2023
Alinghi Red Bull Racing on day 2 of the America's Cup Preliminary Regatta in Vilanova © Samo Vidic / Alinghi Red Bull Racing
Full race mode finally on for Alinghi Red Bull Racing
On a challenging day of light winds, Swiss entry currently sits third in the Preliminary Regatta standings going into the final day of racing in Vilanova on Sunday.
After having to wait an extra day following Friday's weather cancellation, Alinghi Red Bull Racing finally saw its first competitive racing of this 37th America's Cup campaign Saturday. Two out of four races scheduled for the day were completed in the Preliminary Regatta in Vilanova i la Geltrú with Alinghi Red Bull Racing grabbing second-place points when Race 2 was called.
"I haven't been racing for months now so it's good to get that ball rolling finally," said trimmer Yves Detrey. "It just felt good to throw down some races. Obviously, it wasn't looking super nice with the conditions today, but we had a pretty good second race."
Combined with a fourth-place finish in Race 1, the team currently sits third in the standings on 10 points heading into Sunday's final racing session. It was a difficult day for all of the AC40s and the crew of Arnaud Psarofaghis, Maxime Bachelin, Yves Detrey, Bryan Mettraux were challenged by the light wind conditions to keep the boat up on their foils.
Race 2 started in the latest possible window as several AC40s again struggled to stay in foil configuration. Helmsman Arnaud Psarofaghis was the only skipper to keep the boat flying above the water at the start and easily pulled away from the fleet on Leg 1. Psarofaghis and the Swiss AC40 were right on the edge but stayed up during several light air tacks through most of Leg 2 before coming off the foils and being passed by Emirates Team New Zealand.
"It was tough out there to be honest, quite stressful with every manoeuvre, to stay on the foil and to keep our speed as we approached the boundary to tack or gybe," said Bachelin. We knew the goal was to foil at the start and we managed that for the second race. We never lost the focus, every point counts and we were trying to take all we could today."
With the first day of racing completed, it marked the first competitive milestone for the team in the road to the 37th America's Cup next year.
Maxime Bachelin, helmsman: "We saw that the others were not foiling at all in the second race,so we just really stayed focused, on each manoeuvre and I think for a good part of that race we achieved it. We just had a bad gybe on that second leg.
It was a bit like lake conditions, very light wind. We've never sailed these boats on a lake, but we certainly know what it's like to wait when there is no wind, and we just kept the hammer down trying to finish.
We managed quite well through a tough day today, we're right in the middle of the standings. We can just push hard again and make sure we're having good starts. We're quite happy with our speed, so it's full-on for tomorrow."
Yves Detrey, trimmer: "It was such a fine line with those tacks. Since the start we knew we were on the edge. We wanted to manage the entry speed to throw a tack or any manoeuvre basically. We were very close a few times to drop off the foils and fortunately we just managed to stay up. We knew at the top mark that it would be difficult because we saw all the boats drifting with not a lot of wind down there."