Ever Ready

Battery swaps on long days on the water are now a 'thing'...

Gilo Nobili, the Operations Director for Luna Rossa, gave a decent insight into the long days on the water that we are seeing in this cycle as opposed to last cycle, in the latest ‘Inside America’s Cup’ podcast. The key in AC37 was that if you wanted to do a long session, you needed armies of cyclors to swap out as they hit their limits of exhaustion. I’ve been on the ETNZ Chase Boat when that happened and the boys used to come off drenched in sweat, literally on their last legs. Most of the cyclors were pain monkeys, endurance athletes that liked the ‘hurt’ and bloody funny they were too. It was a macabre union. Yes we’ll miss them, but in truth I was never much of a fan of the whole cyclor concept.