America's Cup: Modified Oracle Team USA back on the water - can they now match Team New Zealand?

Oracle Team USA sails during a sailing training session. Photo / AP

Oracle Team USA have returned to the water with a couple of slight tweaks to USA-17, but nothing that will amount to "knots of boatspeed", according to Team New Zealand skipper Glenn Ashby.

Trailing Emirates Team New Zealand 3-0 in the first-to-seven series (4-0 on the water) after the opening weekend of racing in the America's Cup match, a five-day break in the schedule to maximise television audiences has afforded Oracle the opportunity to review their set-up.

Oracle skipper Jimmy Spithill admitted Team NZ had a clear speed advantage over the US boat, and said they needed to make "serious changes" if they were to revive their hopes of the "three-peat".

After a day in the boatshed yesterday, the defender was back out on the Great Sound today. So too was the Team NZ chase boat, with the Kiwis closely monitoring Oracle's progress.

Ashby said Oracle appeared to have made a couple of adjustments to their foils and wing set-up, but the biggest change was in the way the US team are sailing their boat.

"Having a look at them sailing today they've made a couple of changes heading more towards our direction with the way they're sailing the boat and also their wing set-up. I noticed they were trimming their twist a lot more than they have done in the past, which is something we have been working on for quite a while now," said Ashby, the team's wing trimmer.

"There's not a huge amount they can change with their set-up that's going to make a massive difference. It's going to make incremental differences, but I don't think it will be knots of boatspeed like we saw in the previous campaign.

"There's not really anything we were looking at thinking that's really different to what we're doing."

The fight back is on! 💪🇺🇸
35th @AmericasCup Cup#ThreePeat #OracleTeamUSA
More=>https://t.co/a7sfqa4vQo pic.twitter.com/XTNiDS0qV1

— ORACLE TEAM USA (@OracleTeamUSA) June 20, 2017

Team NZ's head of design Dan Bernasconi echoed Ashby's observations on the set-up of the Oracle boat, and believed the biggest gains Spithill and his crew can make at this point will be out on the water.

"They look to have changed the way they set up their foils, and the way they're trimming their wing. There's obviously a limit to the changes they can physically make to the boat in five days, but there are a lot of changes you can make to the way you sail the boat."
The New Zealand crew were not out training today, with the team's sleek 50-foot catamaran still undergoing refinements.

Ashby said the team will be back out on the Great Sound tomorrow with a long list of work-ons to get through.

"Our plan is definitely to get back out on the water and keep refining and keep improving ourselves. We've still got lots of componentry that's still being implemented on the boat.

"We've obviously come here late, we've come in with a bit of a list of things that we've been wanting to do, and we're just fortunate that we're still in the game and able to actually improve the boat," the Australian multihull specialist said.

"There's still as much on the table in terms of technique as there is in improvements on the boat. We'll certainly be getting out there and working on how we actually sail the boat and try and keep our percentage of good performance up around the track as high as we can for as long as we can."

When the television-driven, stop-start regatta resumes this Sunday, racing will run daily until a winner emerges.