America’s Cup: winter training programme in Auckland

They’re calling it ‘winter’ down in Auckland but for all the world it looked like a high-summer day out on the Hauraki Gulf as the Emirates Team New Zealand sailing programme shifts into a whole other gear now. With ‘Taihoro’ their AC75 being readied for transportation up to Barcelona, there’s no racing rest for the team as they now concentrate squarely on race practice back in the team’s two AC40s.

It's an upside-down schedule, more out of necessity than design, to what the other teams are running but with a modicum of time, relatively speaking, on their hands and with the thinking being that the AC75 designs are now so tight, race practice could mean the difference between success and outright failure. If, as expected, the Louis Vuitton 37thAmerica’s Cup Match comes down to a dog-fight then Emirates Team New Zealand want to be the XL Bully in that scenario, hence the intensity today out on the Gulf.

Running against some quite outstanding talent in the form of Josh Junior, Sam Meech, Marcus Hansen and the emerging superstar of Gemma Jones, it was anything but a given for the established, tight-knit crew of Pete Burling, Nathan Outteridge, Blair Tuke and Andy Maloney. The only slight concern was running asymmetric AC40s with the senior team taking the suped-up LEQ12 with its developmental foils and controls and pitting that against a standardised one-design AC40. A Ferrari versus a Maserati perhaps but Ray Davies, the team’s coach saw it differently: “They're quite different in performance and that's quite good when you actually get into racing, you got to go the right way, you got to not make mistakes so this is yeah the beginning of a pretty intense block which will put the sailors under heaps of pressure and expecting some good learnings and debriefs out of all this.” What’s that line however about ‘a little bit of boatspeed making a tactical genius...?’

But Ray was proven right and the pressure more than came on in the pre-starts, an area of specialisation for Josh Junior, who had Burling off his foils at times and was giving no quarter whatsoever. The lead-back into the start lines were full-on with all the requisite feints, dummies, scallops, pressure bow crosses and hooks you could wish for and all at pace with the wind peaking at a solid, wintery, 15 knots that is the kill-zone for these high-performance craft. With speed high, it comes down to accuracy and the repetition of multiple pre-starts followed by three intense races certainly blew the cobwebs off the sailors who have spent the last few weeks in commissioning and tweaking phase with ‘Taihoro.’

A near five-hour session, with the Youth & Women teams staying out even longer, was the marker of the long days ahead for this block of training for the Kiwis. Ray Davies seemed more than pleased and will have plenty to dissect in the capture meeting later saying: “Yeah really good day, big day, the Women and Youth went out first then we did a bunch of two boat racing and the Women and Youth are still out there now so yeah really, really, productive day...awesome to be back sailing the test boat and two-boat testing and that will be the main focus for this upcoming block just racing practise.”

Talking about the Youth & Women’s team that they will be rotating into the AC40s to give them quality on-water time, Ray added: “It's a good time for them to be around, so they’re maximising this block, and we’ll cycle them through to the boat as well during the racing when we can. We had Gemma (Jones) onboard today with JJ (Josh Junior) and Marcus (Hansen) and Sam (Meech) so fantastic opportunity again to be really in amongst it and they're just fizzing - the Youth and Women are having a great time, a lot of them yesterday had their first time ever (on the boat) and it's good to throw them all on the boat together, ripping around, so good to see for the class and the whole concept.”

Reflecting on the 'Taihoro' commissioning and what’s coming up, Ray added: “We had a really good block I think we sailed fourteen of our first eighteen days or something like that. Really, really, good block and the boat’s getting packed up and it's on its way up to Barcelona shortly so now we’re just with the AC40s in New Zealand, pretty intense block until we all leave for the main regatta.”