Peter Lester: Afterguard will be under scrutiny

The next America's Cup acts, which start in Valencia next week, will be of critical importance for Emirates Team New Zealand as they build towards the 2007 event.

For me there are three points of interest - the venue, NZL82, and the sailing team, in particular the afterguard.

While you will probably see a bit of crew rotation in the physical jobs, you would expect people to be locked in when it comes to the afterguard and key trimming roles.

The performance of the afterguard - Dean Barker, Kevin Hall and Terry Hutchinson - will really be scrutinised.

If this mix works, they may well lock them in for the Louis Vuitton Cup.

If it doesn't, it will put them under pressure and possibly force them to rethink the role of top British sailor Ben Ainslie and others.

While I have questioned Barker's ability in the past, I do see an improvement now he has been able to sail in a variety of regattas.

Although his win in the Congressional Cup earlier this year was good, you have to keep it in context.

The boats used in regattas such as the Swedish Match tour can be very manoeuvrable.

If you get into trouble in the prestart then you can just manoeuvre out, whereas in the America's Cup, once you get pinned in the prestart you are stuffed.

So unless they are sailing boats that have similar characteristics to the big, heavy, less manoeuvrable cup boats, then it is off little relevance.

The rebuild of NZL82 has impressed me. The boat was virtually written off when it was hit by a storm in France last year so they took the opportunity to chop the bow and stern off and reconfigure it more along the lines of Alinghi in terms of sectional shape.

The original NZL82 sectional shape through the bow section was V-shaped, quite wide on the deck and quite narrow on the water line.

If you look at the boats now they are very U-shaped in section - very slab-sided, quite flat along the bottom, quite full in the bow.

With the reconfiguration of NZL82 they have gone for those U-shaped sections with the aim, I think, of making the boat a bit stronger for the moderate conditions in Valencia.

The bow is now fuller and has more volume which is possibly the hand of new designer Marcelino Botin, as that is very much his style.

So New Zealand have not only repaired the boat but they have taken the opportunity to test a new hull shape and the results of that will be reflected in their new boat.

The new design specifications (version five of the cup rule) also come into play this year.

These cup boats aren't the biggest show in town any more, given the performance of boats such as New Zealand supermaxi Maximus.

They missed an opportunity to change the boats in 2007. The rule is now 10 years old.

I believe the boats will look quite similar. They'll be about maximum weight and about the same length and have about the same sail area.

The rigs and sail development is where it is at.

The twisting rigs is a big deal. We first saw that with Alinghi in the last Cup and there is a lot of work gone into that area.

The development of the new rigs will be crucial and was one area where many of us thought Alinghi jumped ahead in Auckland.

How teams approach the changes in design will be interesting to see and with everything above deck it is going to be hard for anyone to keep anything secret.

Given the time of these regattas, the conditions should be close to what we can expect in 2007 - so how NZL82 performs will give the team a good indication of where they are at.

Last year Team New Zealand, Oracle and Team Luna Rossa set the bench mark.

Staying in that first division is where Team New Zealand will be wanting to remain.

* Peter Lester is a former America's Cup sailor