America's Cup niggle-o-meter: 'You're killing us'

Sir Ben Ainslie. Photo / AP.

The America's Cup has become known as much for the off-water antics as it has for the on-water action. The event's history is one rich with diplomatic squabbling, jealously guarded secrets, deceit, mind games and out-and-out feuds between sailors. The 35th America's Cup has thus far been no different. To assess the level of unrest in Bermuda, the Herald have come up with a highly scientific measurement - behold the niggle-o-meter.

The niggle meter today detected a little bit of tension aboard one of the boats.

It hasn't been a happy regatta thus far for British team Ben Ainslie Racing, who have endured a string of problems with their boat, most of which stem back to the wee whoopsie they had on day one, when one of their hulls ended up on the deck of Team Japan.

They encountered another issue early on in today's race against Emirates Team New Zealand, giving up their marginal lead at the first mark almost immediately when they came crashing down off their foils, digging the bows in deep.

Cue exasperated cries from the team's principal, CEO, skipper and namesake.

The on-board mics then picked Ainslie up giving his crew a right royal bollocking.

"What just happened?" Ainslie yelled.

"You're killing us, you're absolutely killing us."

It later turned out, as Ainslie explained at the press conference, BAR had a control system failure with one of their daggerboards.

"We had a pretty good wipeout and stuffed the bows in. It was a frustrating moment for us, we had a good start against Emirates Team New Zealand, but they were coming over us with pace and we had to gybe away. We had a systems failure, which meant we couldn't control the daggerboard properly coming onto port gybe."

Ainslie did graciously point out the Kiwi boat had an extra few knots of pace on the Brits today and the outcome would have likely been the same with or without software failure.

"In fairness Team NZ were really going well in those conditions and they would have more than likely found a way past us anyway, but it would have been nice if we could have made life a little bit harder for them."