Britannia has proven doubters wrong, and the best is still to come
Obviously, it is great to have finished top of the round-robin stage of the Louis Vuitton challenger selection series. But I can assure you no one is getting carried away at Ineos Britannia. We have only just got going. Yes, we made some encouraging gains during the first stage of the challenger series, but if we are going to go all the way and win this America’s Cup — which is something I truly believe we can do — we are going to have to find the same again, and then some.
That said, I am happy with where we are at the moment. The manner in which we improved through the round robins was very encouraging. It felt as if we made some really good gains; with the set-up of a boat, with how we’re sailing it. We have got some real momentum now and that is so key in sport. You can sense it when you walk through the base. Everyone can see and feel the progress we are making and the positivity rubs off on you. When you are working as hard as our guys are, both here in Spain and back in the UK in Brackley, you need that.
I’m so proud of how focused everyone remained despite the doubts that were swirling around us after last month’s preliminary regatta. Not once did I see anyone’s head drop. Everyone kept doing what they were doing, stuck to the process, and kept working hard. The doubts were more external to be honest, which is usually the case with these things. People on the fringes, people on message boards overreacting. My job was to try to keep the team on an even keel.
I was open in my last column after the prelims about the fact that we were struggling a bit upwind, and that we had work to do in our manoeuvres to be on the same level as Emirates Team New Zealand, Luna Rossa and American Magic. But I also stressed the fact that we had designed an ultra-aggressive boat to try to win this America’s Cup. I felt we had lots of headroom and that it was up to us now to unlock that potential.
It is easy to write something like that but I feel as if we are starting to prove it. We have definitely made some big gains in the last two weeks, and across the wind range too. We beat Luna Rossa in light airs on Monday and slightly heavier stuff on Saturday. So that’s great for team morale. Have we ticked all the boxes? No. We still need to find a lot more performance. And we can definitely cut down on the errors. We were OCS [over the line early] in one race and we have had a couple of boundary penalties, although in our defence, we have since found out that we had an issue with the software on the tactical app. Either way, I’ll hold up my hands to the fact that we have made some mistakes; messy manoeuvres, some poor reads.
Some messy manoeuvres but major improvements
On the whole, though, I’m happy with how we are progressing as a sailing team, from my relationship with my co-helm Dylan Fletcher, which is improving all the time, to our brilliant trimmers Leigh McMillan and Bleddyn Mon, to our Cyclor group who have worked tirelessly. We are definitely improving.
Our coaches deserve a lot of credit for that. Those wins over Luna Rossa may have looked dominant, but as we have seen, when you are ahead it makes such a difference. Ian Williams, our start coach, has done a superb job. As has Giles Scott, our head of sailing, who remains integral in terms of how Dylan and I prepare for these races.
All of the coaching staff really. Robbie Wilson, Xabi Fernandez. Not to mention the guys poring over the data both here in Barcelona and back in the UK in what we call our Sailing Support Room, or SSR. That’s where all the data from the boat goes back. We have an SSR here in Barcelona and another in Brackley. It is such a cliche but it really is a team effort.
As I’ve said all along, this is a development game. And we need to develop faster than everyone else.
Getting ship-shape for Friday’s semi-final
What do the next few days hold in store? We need to get the boat back in the shed, do some maintenance and make a few tweaks. These gaps between rounds are really the only opportunity to bring upgrades and make changes to the boat, for the challengers anyway. It will probably take us a couple of days. We hope to be back in the water on Thursday ahead of the semi-finals which start on Saturday.
As the top-placed challenger in the round robins, we get to pick our semi-final opponent, but I will not be revealing who that is until we are obliged to do so on Friday. Everyone probably expects us to pick Alinghi as they won the fewest round-robin races of the four remaining challengers.
But there are arguments for and against every team. We all have our strengths and weaknesses. Jimmy Spithill, one of the helms on Luna Rossa, said in his post-race interview on Monday that he was looking forward to their “semi-final against American Magic”. He may have gone a little bit early but let’s see.
We will just get our heads down and keep working hard, keep trying to build that momentum.