America's Cup- Oracle Team USA to conduct final foiling session in USA

by Sail-World.com NZL on 5 Feb 2015 The defending America’s Cup champion, Oracle Team USA, is scheduled to be training on its new AC45 foiling catamaran this month in San Francisco.

'It will be great to commission the new boat,' said tactician and sailing team manager Tom Slingsby.

'You have to go back to the last America’s Cup since we’ve sailed foiling catamarans. The new boat looks great and this is really going to be the start of our new America’s Cup campaign.'

'This will be the first time we’re all sailing on the foiling AC45 so it will be a big learning curve for the whole team and it will be interesting to see how we all gel together,' said trimmer Kyle Langford.

'We have a few new faces and we have to get these guys out sailing on foiling cats,' Slingsby said. 'Guys like Andrew Campbell and Matt Cassidy, who haven’t sailed these boats before so we’re looking forward to showing them the ropes.

'But we’re also looking forward to learning. As you saw in the last America’s Cup our learning curve was so steep.'

In addition to getting the sailors up to speed, the new foiling AC45 will allow the team to test design configurations.

'The foiling AC45 will be our tool to understand how to make our AC62 as fast a boat as possible,' said coach Philippe Presti, who will be on hand to guide the team.

The team will be training together in San Francisco for most of the month. This will be their last training session before relocating to Bermuda in April/May 2015.

Updates on the teams sailing program will be published in the coming days.