Former Team NZ sailor Brad Butterworth chats to NZME's Matt Brown. VIDEO / Emirates Team NZ
Drama and the America's Cup are frequent bedfellows. Yet even the sailing world of the rich and influential cannot escape chaotic evacuations and delays enveloping the sport.
As the vast majority of industry shuts down so, too, is the coronavirus pandemic undermining America's Cup preparations. The longer lockdowns go on,the more stressed schedules for the 36th event become.
World Series events in Cagliari and Portsmouth have been cancelled, leaving Auckland's mid-December regatta as the last chance for the five teams to compete before the Challenger Series gets underway in January.
That's provided further delays aren't imposed.
All teams now face major challenges as construction grinds to a halt.
Ineos Team UK skipper Sir Ben Ainslie, in an interview with the Herald from his home on the Isle of Wight, explained while his team's designers crack on in isolation, development of their second and main race boat has near-ceased.
Other teams face the same strained situation.
"We're starting to see now our suppliers either in full shutdown or making decisions to partly shutdown as we go through the height of the crisis and that's inevitably going to have a knock on effect to our schedule for our second race boat and our strategy around that," Ainslie said.
"It's very fluid at the moment and changing on a daily basis as the government regulations change around us. Everything is effectively on hold."
Ainslie and his team endured a stressful few weeks as Covid-19 rapidly took hold in Europe.
Given the circumstances, Ainslie fully supports the decision to cancel the two World Series regattas but the unprecedented turn of events forced Team UK to scramble after basing themselves and their first boat, the AC75 Britannia, in Cagliari.
"We were going really well down there having some great time out on the water; testing and developing our first race boat. As this crisis started developing we had to very quickly look at our options and effectively evacuate.
"As we've all seen the situation developed very quickly. Pretty much overnight we had to make the decision to shut the site down and get the majority of our people back to the UK and start packing up the base and the boat.
"We're still going through that process. We've got a small squad on the ground who are finalising that pack up. We'll get the assets back to the UK sometime in mid-April. Depending on the situation in the UK with regards to whether there's still a lockdown or not, we'll look at what we can do in terms of setting up our operations in Portsmouth."
Ben Ainslie. Photo / Photosport
Much like Team New Zealand sailors Peter Burling, Blair Tuke, Josh Junior and Andy Maloney, who have been pursuing Olympic programmes, Team UK tactician Giles Scott, the gold medallist from the Rio Games in the Finn class, will also now be required to juggle commitments after the postponement of the Tokyo Olympics to next year.
For all teams abroad, the ongoing uncertainty surrounding everyday life extends to the construction of bases in Auckland and whether these will be completed in time for their scheduled August-September arrival.
"Depending on the timeframe of the delay that could impact when we can get to Auckland," Ainslie said.
"The second consideration is when we can finish our second boat, effectively our race boat, and get that shipped down to Auckland in time."
For now all options remain on the table. That includes the possibility of adding a second World Series regatta in Auckland.
The scheduled December 17-20 regatta would have been a fine-tuning exercise, three weeks out from the Challenger Series. Without adding another race, it will instead become a last chance saloon to test preferred race boats.
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Equally, the longer the global freeze continues the more likely further postponements become.
"There's an argument to say we could push everything as far back as we can. That's got to be a serious consideration for all of the teams. It's one really for Team New Zealand and the New Zealand Government to discuss for when they think it's safe to start operating.
"Hopefully the world will be in a much better place by June/July and things can remain on schedule but that's a decision for those local bodies and whether things need to be delayed further."
Ainslie believes the loss of time, both on and off the water, and the chance to learn more about the capabilities of the respective 75-foot foiling monohulls, heighten the emphasis on design success.
"There's a competitive risk that, for whatever reason, teams that might be slightly off the pace early on are going to have less time to recover. It's going to be absolutely critical that you turn up in New Zealand and hit the water at close to your maximum potential.
"These delays might end up being slightly advantageous for some teams over others. That's nothing any of us can control - it's just the way your hand is dealt. There's nothing we can do about it except react; look after your assets and your people and when everything fires up again, make sure you're in the best possible place to take advantage."
Ultimately all anyone can do at this point is wait and hope for the best outcome.
"We can't make any assumptions. I'm certain Team New Zealand and the New Zealand government will be very keen to stay on schedule it just depends on whether this crisis takes longer than currently predicted.
"For all that's happening in our sporting sphere we've got to remember what's going on out there in the world. Whilst we're really into our own sport it's more important that people are safe."
