In the subsequent analysis of the last day in which it lost both races of the day, Team New Zealand detected that it made two definitive errors. In the first race, the AC75 entered a section of high waves too slowly and lost flight when its foilout of the water. Without support or speed, the ship lost height and was left stuck in the sea with no chance of victory. And in the second, he reacted too slowly to a maneuver by Ineos Britannia when he had gained the position. It all happened in a matter of seconds in the pre-start, the decisive three-minute phase prior to the start of the regatta where the sailboats seek to gain an advantage. The New Zealand Defender started from behind and lost for the first time in the final. This Friday the fifth day takes place (2:10 p.m., Teledeporte and Esport 3) of a final in which the Kiwis win 4 to 2 in a round that is won by the first to reach seven.
“The pre-starts represent 60% or 70% of the regattas,” analyzes Nathan Outteridge, one of the helmsmen of the New Zealand team, which aspires in Barcelona to achieve an unprecedented consecutive triplet in the 173-year history of the America’s Cup. The teams know this well, as they spend hours and hours studying their rivals. “If you get a length (the length of a sailboat) or two ahead, the race is over quickly. And this is what happened on Wednesday,” emphasizes the New Zealand helmsman. “Starting with an advantage gives you a very strong position.” The sailboat in front throws the so-called dirty wind at its rival and the latter must look for alternative routes to escape the trajectory of the leader, who always has an advantage with his winning position. Every day teams download performance data and analyze what they could have done better.
After six races held, Team New Zealand has detected that Ineos Britannia is a squadron with a wide variety of initial proposals. It is difficult to anticipate their tactics and that makes preparation that takes hours of study difficult. “The British are always trying different things. It is difficult to analyze them,” concludes Outteridge.
Every hour of sailing on the water implies at least one hour of simulator time on land, according to Team New Zealand sources. The simulator allows the team’s response at sea to be previously planned and visualized at the base. It is a basic tool for all Copa del América teams and a good part of the chances of success in competition depend on its development. Ineos Britannia spends about two hours a day working on the simulator to practice sailing, admits one of its sailors.
The simulators incorporate the meteorological information of Barcelona from recent years during the competition period. And from the fusion of data related to the wind (strength and direction) and the sea (mainly wave height and currents), the system recreates the Catalan race course so that the teams can feel the response of the boat before set sail. Its importance is such that Sail Team BCN, the Spanish team in the America’s Cup, was third in the women’s category without having its own boat and after having spent close to 99% of its training hours in the simulator.
The case of Team New Zealand goes much further. In the 2021 edition, together with the consulting firm McKinsey, it created a bot (a technological program that imitates human behavior) that learned to use the simulator autonomously through Reinforcement Learning (Reinforcement learningin English, a method of developing artificial intelligence through continuous feedback). In this way, the bot learned to use the digital browser, refining its knowledge based on thousands of simulations.
The creation allowed the design team to work without the need to require sailors in the simulator and the sailors to have clues about the best decisions to make in the water. “What under normal conditions took days, we did in a matter of hours,” Dan Bernasconi, the team’s engineer and designer, often explains. In this process, the hand of the Catalan engineer Roger Frigola, a specialist in artificial intelligence and creator of several of the simulation systems used by the team in Barcelona, shines.
But even in the digital age everything ends up being resolved at sea. And all the previous work of the Kiwis was not rewarded on Wednesday because the weather conditions prevented them from repeating the usual routines. “There was very little wind at the beginning of the day and we were not able to do any previous practice outings and it caught us a little off guard,” admits Blair Tuke, flight controller of the Kiwi sailboat, who is challenging the British improvement: “I don’t think they will be so strong in the pre-start, to be honest. They are a well-prepared team without fear of rocking the boat, but neither are we,” he warns.