Photo assignment for The Great Cup.
Dubai – GC32 Launch Day
You can feel as prepared humanly possible, but launching a new boat is never an easy job, but finally we made it!
After 11 months of hard work with a fantastic design, engineering and build team, the GC32 sailed its first miles on the warm waters of Dubai.
Surrounded by super sailors F18 World Champion Thijs Visser, F18 vice World Champion Karel Begemann, F18 legend Bastian Tentij, Olympic Sailor/Coach & X40 Sailor Hugh Styles, Moth World Champion Josh McKnight, F18 Sailors Olivier Witteveen, Tim Shuwalow & Jason Waterhouse, we worked hard days and nights at the Dubai International Marina in front of the amazing landscape assembling, splicing ropes, and generally playing boats and winding the structure up to load test everything.
Right from the first day sailing, the GC32 demonstrated its personality, with a very stiff platform giving amazing acceleration. We were all astonished at how quick the boat was out of the box. Many of the complex areas such as foil control systems worked perfectly well from day 1 and the boat has already demonstrated that it will be a great class racing boat that rewards tidy crew work and focused helming. She is so quick, safe with great sailing behavior remaining well on top of the water with bear aways easily accomplished. The double S foils and L Rudders give an amazing new turbo button adding more righting moment (horse power) or more lift.
The boat has excelled our expectations. With only a few optimizations needed to make the boat perfect. We discussed those changes with our build partners and we should be back on the water within 3 weeks for the final signoff for this new one design class.
It has been an honor to work with such a team. I would like to thank the entire sailing team for their dedication to make this happen. The whole team at Premier Composites that have been supporting us in many many ways during the entire launch. We could have not made it happen without them. Southern Spars, North Sails, Heol composites and OnDeck have all gone the extra mile as well in order to ensure the success of this exciting new class.
Lastly I want to thank Andrew Macpherson, he has been coordinating all the operations to deliver the boat on the water. Well done!
Words: Laurent Lenne CEO The Great Cup
http://www.thegreatcup.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GC32Racing
