America’s Cup: Josh Junior expects more similarities in Barcelona as Team New Zealand finish block of AC75 testing

Team New Zealand have been sailing their AC75 Te Rehutai in Auckland over the past couple of months. Photo / James Somerset - ETNZ

Team New Zealand sailor Josh Junior believes there could be more similarities with vessels on the water in Barcelona next year as the various America’s Cup contenders get more familiar with the AC75.

The America’s Cup is often called a design race because of the importance the development of a vessel has on the outcome, and the six teams competing will be allowed to build only one new 75-foot foiling monohull for next year’s regatta.

With teams getting only one shot to build a winning boat, the importance of design, development and refinement is amplified as teams develop their own ideas and keep an eye on what their opponents are doing in a bid to find some sort of edge in their final product.

In their bid to achieve just that, Team New Zealand have been sailing the Cup-winning vessel Te Rehutai with an updated configuration over the past two months, which has been a hugely beneficial window as they approach the deadline for committing to their final design.

While there was plenty of intrigue in the cosmetic elements of the vessels sailing in Auckland in 2021, Junior expects a lot of similarities across the fleet as the syndicates have had more time to get to grips with the AC75 and what is possible to achieve with the boat.

“I think you’ll just see a big refinement in the boats and the foils going forward,” Junior told the Herald.

“As things develop, everything will just get more and more refined and the boats will start to look a little bit more similar to each other across the teams. I think the gains are a little bit smaller now and you just need to keep chipping away and keeping the boat a little bit quicker all the time. That’s what I hope to see.”

Team New Zealand’s two-month block aboard their current AC75 came to an end this week, with Te Rehutai set to be shipped to Barcelona where the team will join later in the year.

While plenty has been made about the need for the team to chase rocky conditions in preparation for the Spanish swells, the conditions alone aren’t the only big difference for Team New Zealand this time around.

Among the clear changes in Te Rehutai’s new configuration is the return of cyclors in place of grinders and lowing the crew size from 11 to eight. Team New Zealand have also adopted a dual helming strategy, with Peter Burling and Nathan Outteridge sharing the role.

The dual helming set up will be familiar to fans of the Cup, as Luna Rossa were the only team to come up with the idea for the Auckland regatta in 2021 and that proved to be a beneficial system, though one that stressed the importance of onboard communications.

But while there has been plenty of information that needed to be discovered during this recent phase as they prepare to begin the build of their new boat, Junior said getting comfortable in unfamiliar territory had been the priority.

“The biggest change for us has just been trying to get out in those waves. We’ve spent three or four years just sailing in perfectly flat water, and now we realise that we need to be good in the waves.

“We need to get out there and learn about it, so we’ve been looking for the forecast when you get the big, nor-east swells come in and we’ve been trying to get out there and just learn how to sail the boat in those conditions.”

It has been a fruitful period for the team as they have regularly broken the 50 knot mark, however it hasn’t been without the odd teething issue. Junior found himself at the centre of what Burling deemed “the biggest bang” of the team’s campaign when the J2 jib blew out as he was at the back of it adjusting something.

“It gave me a big fright but it was all okay,” Junior said.

“That’s part of the America’s Cup is to keep pushing, to keep, challenging yourself and to keep coming out with new ideas, but in doing that, sometimes things go wrong and that was just part of the game.”

The team have now returned to testing on their AC40s as they prepare for the first preliminary regatta of the campaign in mid-September in Vilanova i La Geltrú in Spain, about 50km from Barcelona.