America’s Cup: Team New Zealand downplays rivals’ supposed advantage as testing enters crucial stage

Team New Zealand have been sailing their reconfigured AC75 Te Rehutai in Auckland over the past month. Photo / Emirates Team New Zealand

Team New Zealand’s focus is about to shift.

In late March, the reigning America’s Cup holders relaunched their winning AC75 with a new look, more in line with how they will be sailing in Barcelona next year.

Since then, they have been focused on putting the vessel through its paces across a range of conditions as they prepare for the rocky Spanish waters.

However, any lessons they hope to learn from the exercise will need to be discovered in the coming weeks, with Te Rehutai set to be shipped to Barcelona in less than a month.

It will take the vessel just under a month to reach its destination — transport time that cuts into potential sailing time in comparison to those teams based in Europe.

But Team New Zealand chief operating officer Kevin Shoebridge said it wouldn’t have as heavy an impact as the timeframe might suggest.

“The thing with these programmes is you can’t sail every day otherwise you don’t have time to debrief and learn and develop and change things,” Shoebridge said.

“I think the mix we have at the moment of [sailing] around three days a week — sometimes four, sometimes two — is about right. You tend to focus on certain blocks and when you’re not sailing in those blocks you’re developing and making changes. We’ll work around that.”

With several of the team’s sailors set to compete at the SailGP grand final in San Francisco next week, Team New Zealand will likely have only the week following for more time on Te Rehutai before it is shipped away and they move back into two-boat testing with their AC40s.

Teams are only allowed to build one new race boat during this campaign, so learning as much about sailing an AC75 in the proposed configuration will be vital as the new hull design is due to be signed off.

By the time Te Rehutai arrives in Barcelona, the team will have signed off on the hull design for their new race boat, with Shoebridge confirming that was a matter of weeks away.

“A lot of work has gone into the development of that AC75, the boat that we won the up in, to try and test out multiple ideas and functions for the next race boat. That’s been a really good block for us.”

A lot has been made of the challenges of the location for next year’s regatta, particularly the fact the syndicates will be sailing in swells as opposed to the calmer seas seen in Auckland in 2021, so sending Te Rehutai to Barcelona allows the team a full-scale learning experience when the sailors follow later this year.

“The sea state is something we’re going to have to get a handle on; that’s one of the reasons we’re taking the 75 up there,” Shoebridge said.

“I wouldn’t say it’s an issue. It’s just going to be different to how it is here and the boats will need to be developed and designed and optimised to deal with these things, but I don’t think it’s going to be an issue at all.”