What lessons from the racing in San Francisco in 2013 will help the six America’s Cup teams be ready in Bermuda in 2017? We can expect the conditions on the Great Sound to be more varied than San Francisco Bay, both in wind direction and strength. Nevertheless, over the 19 races of the 2013 America’s Cup, we saw light air days with big shifts as well as the usual strong sea breeze. In the infamous Race 13, when time ran out with New Zealand far ahead and less than a mile from the finish, the boats struggled to fly a hull, much less to get up on their foils. Two days later, in both Races 14 and 15, in conditions strong enough to leave the gennakers at the dock, the Kiwis were eating into Oracle’s leads on each of the second downwind legs when they sailed into light patches and Oracle stretched out again for the two wins. The San Francisco conditions provided plenty of variety and the racing offers several useful lessons.

Clearly, getting up on the foils in transitional conditions pays off handsomely. By Race 15 in San Francisco, Oracle was able to foil upwind in 15 knots true wind speed. All the teams expect to foil upwind in 2017. Lifting off before your competitor in marginal conditions will be a weapon. The teams are allowed a total of four boards – two sets – on their AC Class race boats. So moding the boat for the day may now include choosing light air or heavy air daggerboards, trading off lift, drag and stability. Midway through the 2013 match, Oracle improved their wing controller to allow them to mode the wing between races. Presumably all the teams will have some ability to mode their wings for the conditions. Oracle developed their beast mode to enable upwind foiling, with six of the eight grinders constantly providing power to allow the wing trimmer to ease and trim the wing aggressively. Team New Zealand sailed wider upwind angles to build speed and enable their skimming mode. Oracle then combined wider angles and beast mode to foil upwind and the Kiwis were also able to foil upwind in the later races.

Once you’re going fast, where are the passing opportunities? Where can you most easily defend a lead? In San Francisco, 15 of the 17 lead changes came on the single upwind leg in each of the 19 races. In the entire regatta, there was only one lead change after the windward gate, in Race 10, and there were no lead changes at all on the final reach to the finish. Whether the conditions and the tighter race course in Bermuda will offer downwind passing opportunities remains to be seen. We can imagine that the coaches are working out scenarios and that the teams with the luxury of two boat testing – Oracle and Artemis Racing for now – will be experimenting with those scenarios. Of course, all the teams will have a chance to find sparring partners once the AC Class race yachts are launched and training in Bermuda. By the time racing starts on 27 May 2017, everyone should have their playbooks worked out.

One tactic we will see very consistently is splitting at the gate, particularly the downwind gate. Precise, confident boathandling will be the big enabler here. In some races, we’ll see a team trade off distance lost in a tack or a gybe against the tactical gain to be had by setting up to round the mark they want. We’ll also see some bold, last second moves like the one Oracle pulled at the first leeward gate in Race 13 in San Francisco, gybing right in front of New Zealand, instead of carrying on to the left gate mark. Ben Ainslie, Oracle’s tactician, described it: “It was clearly a tricky spot because there was a big righthand shift coming to that gate and we weren’t 100% sure whether Dean and the guys were going to lay the left gate or not. But as soon as they gybed, then we made that split second decision to gybe, and they would then have to follow us to the right gate, or take another gybe back to the left and we’d be in favor with the shift on the right tack. But we were obviously waiting the them to see what their move was before we made that final choice and it was last second thing which went well.”

One more lesson from the 2013 America’s Cup Match: in 19 races neither team was penalized for an unforced error – entering the start box early, being OCS or going out of bounds. All the teams will want to emulate that performance.