KEY POINTS:
This was never going to be a mission for the faint-hearted.
In a game where secrecy is everything, we knew it could get dirty.
Nevertheless, it was our duty to find out what Team New Zealand are up against in SUI100.
Locating the Alinghi boats through the thick
haze off the Valencia coast nearly thwarted the spying mission before it began.
You'd think it impossible to lose two giant 24-metre America's Cup yachts with mainsails the size of jumbo jets' wings. Well, think again.
But the haze had its advantages.
"We'll use it as camouflage," the Maxwell Smart impersonator said.
The mission started like a trip down memory lane.
With a 12-metre regatta taking place in Valencia, there was dear old KZ7, the boat that got New Zealand through to the challenger series final in 1987. Not far away was Freedom, the 1980 America's Cup winner. It was all quite moving.
Anyway, no time for reminiscing, we were on a very important mission.
After putting around for what seemed like ages, we saw the bright red spinnakers of Emirates Team New Zealand billowing out in the distance.
Pity it wasn't our own country's team we were spying on, at least we would have actually located them.
Just when hope was fading, the haze parted and there they were. SUI91 and SUI100, spinnakers up and powering straight towards us . "Um Maxwell? ... "
The next dilemma was to establish which was which. SUI91 did have 91 on it mainsail. But that could have been a trick. We certainly weren't falling for that. No siree.
But we figured that because tactician Brad Butterworth and helmsman Ed Baird were on the other boat, that was the rocketship. The great SUI100.
Thundering along in extremely light conditions, one of the first things you notice about the Swiss boats is how good looking they are. They glide through the water effortlessly. Team New Zealand boss Grant Dalton always says a beautiful boat is usually a fast one. Alinghi skipper Brad Butterworth always says a faster boat usually wins the America's Cup.
Like the New Zealand boats, the Swiss pair look like clones of each other. Performance wise they are probably also like the Kiwis boats and are evenly matched. But they are quite different from the New Zealand boats.
The Alinghi hulls are quite U-shaped whereas the New Zealand boats are very slab sided and quite flat across the bottom. U-shape sections tend to be designed for 12 knots or more.
The hull shape of the Team New Zealand boats suggest they're optimised for between 8-12 knots.
The volume in the Alinghi boats is probably as far forward as Team New Zealand's, maybe even further because of those U sections.
That equates to more waterline length and stops the bow from pitching up and down.
The Alinghi masts appear to be a couple of hundred millimetres wider than the New Zealand ones at the deck which might give them more stability.
As they eased past it was clear Alinghi's two gennakers were quite different. One was essentially a deeper sail, the other one was a lighter sail and was smaller in the head. Maybe they were testing.
From our spying position, SUI91 was leading SUI100 downwind.
Then disaster struck for the rocketship. As SUI100 gybed, the spinnaker got caught on a jumper tearing the sail in two.
What we suspect was SUI91 rounded the mark well ahead.
We didn't really see the boats upwind too much because the Swiss, who had clearly clicked onto the fact they were being followed - or more likely, wanted to evaluate performance - aborted the race.
But from what we saw SUI100 is probably not going to lean over much, unlike the narrow NZL92 which heels over so much at times it looks like it's going to roll over.
It looks like SUI100 was using a lot of waterline length. More waterline length normally equates to more boat speed. Short boats don't go that fast, long boats do.
When NZL92 heels over it picks up a lot of waterline length. The waterline length on the Kiwi and Swiss boats look about the same.
Alinghi's masts look good. They look pretty stiff and are very detailed in terms of spreader attachments and end cup fittings where the rods go through. It looks like they've put lots of thought into reducing windage with every piece of their rig.
It was hard to tell if Alinghi's rigs were twisting any more than the Kiwi rigs.
The Swiss rigs have three spreaders as opposed to Team New Zealand's four. It probably means their masts are thicker in section than the Kiwi ones, especially around the point where the forestay connects at the top. The trade off for fewer spreaders is that you have to have bigger sections and bigger rods. It means less drag on the mast, but then you need more weight in the rig to maintain strength.
On this occasion the Swiss were also sailing with jumpers on their rigs. They also have jumper-less rigs.
Alinghi's sails also looked impressive in terms of the construction, the layout of the fibres and attention to detail.
Feeling brave, we eased our way over towards SUI100. We were so close we could almost have had a yarn with Butterworth while he sat on the side having a feed.
Our mission was to check out where the shrouds connect to the deck.
The shrouds are the cables or rods which support the mast sideways.
Rumour has it the Swiss have engineered a way to connect the forces of their rig to their keel fin, to help stiffen it during racing. Something which could give them a crucial speed edge.
Where the shrouds connected looked a bit odd.
The cables looked like they were going through the deck but it was hard to verify.
Because we can't see what is happening under the deck we will never know.
Just as we were repositioning, an Alinghi tow boat came barrelling towards us, hooked up SUI100 and they were off. "But wait! We're not finished we just need to see ... "
So what did we ascertain from our spying mission?
SUI91 and SUI100 are nice looking boats and quite different from the black boats in hull shape, heel angle, mast.
Like the New Zealand boats Alinghi have paid a lot of attention to detail.
SUI91 and SUI100 appear to be quite even in performance.
But is SUI100 faster than NZL92?
There was nothing to suggest it would be, but until race one we simply won't know.
