America's Cup: Ashby's flying on wingsail and his special 'Xbox console' toy

Peter Burling, helmsman for Emirates Team New Zealand, right, steers as they cross the line to win the second race against Oracle Team USA. Photo / AP

He is sailing's ultimate wingman.

Team New Zealand skipper Glenn Ashby's mastery of the science and the art of trimming rigid wingsails is considered one of the underlying factors in the speed edge of the Kiwi boat in this America's Cup.

Much fascination from Cup observers has surrounded the set-up of the New Zealand wing, and the "Xbox console" from which Ashby controls it. While the other race yachts in this year's America's Cup employed a traditional hydraulic winch system to control the wing, Ashby is adjusting the twist and camber in the wing via a toggle on his little handset.

It gives Ashby the ability to make micro adjustments to the wing - sometimes just a case of a few millimetres - swiftly and accurately.

The Australian multihull veteran, who at 39 "buggers up the average age" in the young Team NZ crew, admits he is pretty chuffed with his nifty toy.

"We think it's pretty special," he said.

The development, says Ashby, is all down to brilliant customer service on behalf of the Team NZ designers. Early in the design process Ashby, who has always had a fascination with how things work, had firm ideas of how he would like the control system to operate.

"I had some ideas of what I'd like as a customer, and Steve Collie and Martin McElwee had some fantastic ideas of how to implement those features," he said. "Those guys are very, very clever guys. You look inside the thing and you go 'how the hell can you make all that work'?"

While Ashby has sung the praises of the wing design team and systems engineers for helping fulfil his vision, technical director Dan Bernasconi said the Team NZ skipper made a pretty good client.

"Glenn in particular is the best skipper a designer could hope to work with, because he is just full-on into any new idea. However crazy it is, Glenn is up for it," he said.

"We certainly had no one holding us back in terms of wanting to try radical approaches to things."

For the Xbox generation, it may look like a fairly straight forward piece of kit, but it took the multiple world champion in the A-class catamaran more than a year to master the new mechanics of trimming the wing.

"It's definitely something I've had to teach myself - a whole lot of new skills to be able to sail the boat. I spent sort of 2-years now working on that control box to set it up in a way that I can feel comfortable adjusting all the things that I need to adjust and be able to do it basically by feel so you're not actually having to look at anything," he said.

"You know exactly where all your buttons are and all your toggles and you can sail your boat with your head out the window."

To get the most out of the powerful 24m wingsail, the wing and the jib need to work in unison.

It is a science, with small adjustments to the twist and camber of the wing having the potential to have a significant impact on the performance of the boat, and an art-form based on gut feel and intuition when it comes to reading the wind.

Ashby describes the balancing act as like conducting an orchestra.

"You want to keep the boat as level as you possibly can. You don't want it going up and down, you want it to be trimmed really accurately and have that windward hull nice and close to the water," he said.

With a strong background in sailing wingsailed catamarans, Ashby considers himself lucky the America's Cup game has shifted to high performance multihulls over the past seven years.

"I guess it's been one of those journeys where the cards have kind of fallen my way with the way the game has kind of gone."

Ashby hopes the cards continue to fall his way over the coming days.