The first race with two boats of the Louis Vuitton Cup happened Saturday in San Francisco. It was Emirates Team New Zealand vs. Luna Rossa. Team New Zealand was the favorite, but the question was how good are those kiwis?
The answer is those kiwis are fast, really fast. In a 20 knots breeze (close to the race limit), they beat Luna Rossa by more than 5 minutes.
Here is the difference right after the start, Team New Zealand is foiling at full speed, while Luna Rossa is barely foiling.
Team New Zealand was looking really strong on each leg of the race.
To illustrate the difference between the two teams compare the boats positions in the images pairs taken at the same spot.
- After the tack, Team New Zealand gets its boat regaigning speed a lot faster than Luna Rossa. You can see that the entire crew of Team New Zealand has regrouped quickly, while Luna Rossa has still crew members moving from one side to the next:
- Here, a little bit further in the race, in the down wind leg, Luna Rossa can barely foil compared to Team New Zealand:
- At the buoy, you can appreciate the difference in foiling height of the two teams. On the first image, Luna Rossa is at least one leg behind already.
In the last leg, Luna Rossa finally got its foiling technique going. At that time, Team New Zealand had already crossed the finish line.
Those races don’t really count (they will all be finalists of the Louis Vuitton Cup due to lack of participants), but Luna Rossa needs to improve drastically if they want to compete in the America’s cup.