Luna Rossa test new rudder – and take a knock

After a fortnight off, Luna Rossa were back on the water off Cagliari yesterday with something new to try on the boat. A reworked rudder – extra blade area up top, less down low, built to sharpen the leading edge – had been fitted over the break, and the sailing team wasted no time putting it through its paces. The morning session, sailed in a gentle seven to nine knots, went smoothly enough. The calm didn't last into the afternoon.

Working through a string of full-throttle bear-aways and gybes, sailing with the windward foil half-buried, the AC75 pushed the new blade to its limits – and found them. Mid bear-away, the rudder ventilated and stalled, and for a moment the crew had nothing to steer with.

“We lost the rudder, so we didn't have any more control of the blade, the yaw of the boat,” Vittorio Bissaro, Luna Rossa's flight controller and trimmer told the Cup recon team. “That led the boat to bear away, and pass through the power zone. It was a dangerous situation. So the reaction there was just making sure to put the rudder in the water. So don't care about the bow, the distance of the bow from the water. Just keep the elevator in the water, because what really can cause damage in that situation is popping the rudder. So I think it was a well managed save.”

The boat pitched bow-up hard and thudded back down onto the hull, but there was no damage, and the crew were back sailing within minutes.

That moment aside, it was – by Luna Rossa's own account – a good day back. “It was the first day after the holiday, a long break," Bissaro says. “We had a lot of stuff to test and it was super productive. We ticked all the boxes.”

Pitch control remains the team's ongoing preoccupation as they push their pre-start routines harder, sailing tighter, faster circles with a sharper bow-up attitude through the corners. “It's not easy," Bissaro admits, “because today we had a very nice bow up, harder attack... sometimes we are still struggling to keep everything in control. But it's a long process and we are happy with the pace so far.”

Five sessions and 135 foiling minutes later, Luna Rossa called it a day just after 3pm. They're back out on the water on Friday.