America’s Cup: Team New Zealand brush off issues with new equipment as development phase ramps up

Sometimes during a development process, things just don’t work how they’re supposed to.

That was the case for Team New Zealand this week, who missed an opportunity to make the most of some pristine conditions on the Hauraki Gulf as an issue with their port foil forced them off the water early.

The team has been back in New Zealand for the past week after a long stint in Barcelona gathering data both on their testing AC75 and scaled-down AC40 ahead of next year’s America’s Cup regatta.

With the hull of their new race AC75 under construction, the team are deep in the development phase of their campaign and have been testing new components on their LEQ12 vessel - a testing-only version of the AC40, which was named World Sailing’s Boat of the Year for 2023.

On Monday, they were sailing with a new foil in a short-lived session, which was called to a halt due to a “general control issue” with the new addition which could not be fixed on the water.

“We haven’t had too many days like this. It’s a bit of a shame and plenty to work through because reliability is key. Not a good day for us,” Team New Zealand coach Ray Davies said.

“It’s definitely been good to throw it out there and learn some new stuff. It’s going just fine. It’s amazing how much you just keep learning with these programs so we’re happy to keep pushing on there, and there’s a bit more to learn yet I’d say.”

The issue was resolved overnight, and the team were back on the water on Tuesday to put the boat through its paces again in a two-and-a-half-hour session out by Rangitoto Island.

Last month, Team New Zealand’s head of design Dan Bernasconi stressed the importance of maximising the time available to them and told the Herald there were weekly deadlines they were trying to hit now the build and development phase is at the pointy end.

Team New Zealand expect to launch the AC75 they will race during the America’s Cup in Auckland early next year and get it wet on home soil to work out any teething before sending it to Europe. But because they’re the only team in the Southern Hemisphere, the Kiwis lose a significant amount of time in shipping their boat to Barcelona, with Bernasconi estimating they lose “six weeks – at best.”

“Basically, we work on a weekly basis, so every week we’ve got it sort of mapped out over the whole build process until our launch date with what set of drawings and parts need to be complete by each weekly deadline,” Bernasconi said.

“That’s a big planning process at the start to make sure that we do hit that launch deadline because we’re trying to compress the schedule as much as possible so that we launch when we want to launch and but have as much design time leading up to that to optimise the all the aspects of the boat.”

The team has been working through a continued test programme in the short window at home before they depart for the second preliminary regatta in Jeddah, which begins on November 29.

The Kiwis head to Saudi Arabia next week in preparation for that, so helmsman Peter Burling said this week shaped up as an important period in which they could focus on the development side of things.

“We’ve obviously got a few bits of new equipment on the yacht and a pretty short timeframe between now and when we head off to the next World Series event, so it’s awesome to be able to charge forward a little bit and keep ahead of the designers coming into the next period.”

Christopher Reive joined the Herald sports team in 2017, bringing the same versatility to his coverage as he does to his sports viewing habits.