Peter Lester: Cup encourages the best in ideas and innovation

It's not too hard to pick the subtle changes on the back of Alinghi's second boat now there's talk that Team New Zealand are hiding a radical false hull under their skirts.

When Alinghi's race boat SUI64 was towed out from the Viaduct Harbour this week, it left behind a flat, uniform wake - nothing that would bring a sparkle to the eye.

SUI75, the second boat and the one that has been changed, generated a much steeper wave pattern in its wake.

And looking at the boat you could actually see that there was something under the water causing the wave pattern, something that increased the waterline length of the boat for more speed.

There's no secret now that the Alinghi boats are different in the stern.

The whole concept of putting more volume into the back of the boat, which Team New Zealand is thought to have done with a false partial hull attached as an appendage, has been discussed before.

There was talk in past cups, even if it did not reach the levels of what has now been adopted. However, designers didn't think it would be ruled legal.

It's a classic case of an idea that is talked about, discarded, and brought back again with a fresh approach.

And of course it is human nature to try to get something that someone else has. If someone's got a better cricket bat than you, then you'd get one too.

Team New Zealand's millennium rig was revolutionary in 2000 and now everyone out there has modified and adopted it.

They had three, not four, spreaders with diagonal stays running from the tip of one spreader to the tip of the higher or lower spreader, intersecting through the mast - a criss-cross arrangement - with a mechanical device attaching them to the mast to give it lateral support.

The interesting thing is that the New Zealanders have now gone back to four spreaders, while everyone else still has three. I don't know if that's the result of them breaking a couple of rigs; other syndicates have broken them as well.

The four-spreader rig possibly gives more support to the spar, and the mast section can be lighter. There may also be little difference in drag between four and three-spreader rigs.

The teams have made big advances in rig technology and sail development this time, which will flow back into the rest of the sport.

All but Alinghi's masts are made by a New Zealand company, Southern Spars, which is no mean achievement.

Alinghi have opted for a European spar maker, working with New Zealand crewman Murray Jones, who is also a spar maker.

They've done a really good job of developing the nicest spars in the challenger series. They can sail with a spar that sets up easily, they have good range with the mainsails and they have good control.

Alinghi and OneWorld also came out with a spreader pusher system that enables the genoa sail area to be bigger, and I see Team New Zealand are practising with that.

The International America's Cup Class rule has enough flexibility for people to be innovators, to be lateral thinkers.

Maybe it's the Kiwis' strength to be creative. Not all of them are working for New Zealand at the moment, but a lot of the smart ideas in the cup are coming from Kiwi intellectual and marine industry knowledge.

Alinghi, Oracle and OneWorld have all used New Zealand boatbuilders - Tim Gurr, Peter Sowman and Richard Gillies.

And what you learn about the America's Cup is that sometimes if you encourage people to fail, you might learn from the idea.

When you think of Farr, Laurie Davidson, Russell Coutts, Tom Schnackenberg and Mike Drummond, they're seriously smart people.

If you take off your "I love Team New Zealand" hat for a moment, you would have to sit back and applaud all of them and their ability to embrace not just success but also failure - because you just might revisit that idea later.

* Peter Lester is Yachting New Zealand's high-performance manager.

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