It’s been a demanding week for SoftBank Team Japan after suffering damage to their new AC45 Sport test boat Otosan while practicing on the Great Sound in Bermuda last Friday.
Only on its fifth day of on the water testing, the new boat suffered a dagger board system failure that forced the team to return to shore immediately. Fortunately no one was injured and now less than a week later the test boat is almost ready to take to the water once more following a heroic effort from the shore crew.
Tactician and Sailing Director Chris Draper checks in with a summary of the incident and explains why challenges like this serve to strengthen the campaign:
“We were out for our day fifth day of training in Otosan and after doing a bit of upwind calibration we were headed downwind to set-up for some racing with ORACLE TEAM USA. We entered a gybe as per normal and as we dropped the board we had a failure in the mechanical board system. There was an enormous noise.
“I was to leeward already to drive out the gybe and at first I thought we’d hit a channel marker or something. We rounded up immediately and stopped the boat and found that the windward dagger board had passed the top bearing meaning it had exited straight out of the bottom of the boat. The noise we had heard was the board hitting the hull from the outside.
“The whole thing happened very quickly. Within a few minutes of the failure, the board was on our chase boat, Yamaha 2 and we sent in a swimmer to check the integrity of the hull. After that we were on our way back to the dock. When it happened we went through the normal safety procedures of checking that everyone was ok before moving on to getting the board out of the water.”
Following inspection the team quickly found a failure in the dagger board system. Once on shore, they were able to analyze the data and look at onboard camera footage to pinpoint exactly what happened. With the problem solved, the boat building team then went to work repairing the boat and the appendage system.
“The hull had some damage to the core, which has been replaced and re-laminated”, said Draper. “There is a bit of work inside the dagger board housing itself and some work to do to the appendage. We are super lucky to have such a great boatbuilding team that have jumped on top of all of this along with great support from core builders and our cousins next door.”
Reflecting on the incident, Draper’s experience tells him that it actually serves to strengthen the team’s resolve being able to turn around a significant repair this quickly. This quick turnaround practice will surely pay dividends once the pace of racing picks up during the 2017 America’s Cup.
“The team reacted really well when the incident happened”, said Draper. “Nobody panicked and it was dealt with very calmly. The damage could have been much worse. These types of things are great for building strength within the team as everyone is working overtime to get the boat back on the water ASAP. The weather would have been no good for sailing this week anyway and so this presents us a great opportunity.”
SoftBank Team Japan General Manager Kazuhiko “Fuku” Sofuku, echoed Draper’s sentiment.
“In an America's Cup campaign, these things always happen randomly and it’s a bit of a test for the team but we get to prove how strong we are and that we're managing to fix it on time. These things make us stronger.”
The team expects to return to practice on their AC45 Sport this weekend pending completion of repairs.
From SoftBank
