Image by George Johns/Alinghi.
 
Collective fingers here in Valencia are crossed for a suitable weather window tomorrow to allow the first race of the 33rd America’s Cup to take place. That said the level of confidence is pretty low, as in reality the ‘fresh to frightening’ conditions we experienced today, look likely to continue tomorrow.
 
Alinghi’s weather team suggested this afternoon that the chance of racing taking place tomorrow was a ‘slight’ one. They are forecasting up to twenty knots in the morning with wave heights between one and two metres. They believe the winds are set to calm down around noon, but the deciding factor will be how long it takes for the sea state to moderate enough for racing. Depressingly, according to both teams, there have only been a handful of days in the last month where the weather would have allowed America’s Cup racing to take place. Alinghi V is only one of the two boats to have sailed the course; they completed three practice 'races' in full race mode.
 
The respective weather teams are considered more vital to the success of their campaigns at this America’s Cup than at any other time. The version five AC boats raced around two mile courses and with wind spotters up the rig, could ‘see’ wind up to sixteen minutes away. The multihulls at this Cup are racing around courses with up to twenty mile legs and can travel at up to three times the wind speed. With such massive rigs on these boats, there can be as much as seven knots difference between the wind at the top of the mast and at deck level. With the crews restricted to deck level, in terms of wind spotting they can effectively be considered to be sailing blind; relying almost totally on the information they have been given by their meteorologists prior to the five minute gun. The quality of this information is utterly mission-critical. Picking the right side of the first beat and benefiting from as little as two knots extra pressure translates into a boatspeed increase of as much as twenty percent.
 
No surprise then that both teams have had their extensive weather teams here in Valencia for quite a while. The Alinghi wind gurus have nine weather boats, two microlight planes, multiple land-based weather stations along the Spanish coast, as well as one in Ibiza. Additionally, they have a LIDAR vertical-wind-profiler mounted on the exit to the port. This final highly-expensive bit of kit is permanently pointed at the sky and measures wind strength vertically at intervals of ten metres. The data from all of these multiple collection points is constantly fed back to a central server back at the Alinghi base for analysis by their team of experts.
 
On a ten o’clock start race day, the weather boats set out for the racecourse before dawn and immediately begin collecting the data on which the choice of sails for Alinghi V will be made. At first light, the microlights take to the air feeding back data on wind strength and direction at a range of heights above sea level. At eight-thirty, the race crew are briefed by satellite phone on the weather information gathered so far, to enable them to make their final decision on which sails to load on board. At nine o’clock, the weather team issue the Alinghi afterguard with their call on the weather expected for the period of the race. This is the key information which will shape the Alinghi strategic decisions for the race. Eight minutes before the start, the on-board satphones are turned off, packed into a waterproof box and dumped over the side for collection by an Alinghi chase boat. From that point on, the crew are on their own.