Luna Rossa sets sail

Luna Rossa is moored a few dozen metres from the base in Cagliari where it was born, first as the drawings of its designers and then at the hands of sailing's most talented artisans. The work took many months and came to life thanks to the most innovative materials for use on water, first of all carbon-fibre. The creation of the hull required 7,000 square metres of fibre and 400 square metres of aluminium honeycomb. The two carbon-fibre “foil arms”, each weighing about 500 kilograms, can support a maximum load of 27 tonnes.

Another innovative feature of the AC75 is the “soft wing”. This system consists of two sails hoisted in parallel with in-built structures to control the sail shape. This provides the efficiency of a hard wing combined with ease of use and handling similar to that of a traditional sail. It was made with 20,000 kilometres of carbon-fibre thread, plus an additional 5,000 kilometres for each jib and 12,000 kilometres for each “code zero”, the sail used downwind in light breezes.

The preliminary regattas, the America's Cup World Series, will take place from April 23 to 26 in Cagliari. “We can't wait – explained skipper Max Sirena- to get acquainted with the AC75, a boat that will sail almost entirely in foiling mode: the hull will barely touch the water, allowing us to reach very high speeds. A lot of effort has gone into reducing the transition time between the phase where the hull is fully in the water and the flying phase. It is a difficult balance to achieve and we will continue to work on it during the development stage. I would like to thank the whole team and the shore and design teams in particular for their months of tireless work”.