Our new yacht is best of the best says Barker

By JULIE ASH and HELEN TUNNAH

Team New Zealand designer Clay Oliver watched the first of the new black boats enter the water in the Viaduct Harbour last night confident his team's strength of character will make them unstoppable in the America's Cup defence.

NZL81, christened New Zealand by Lady Pippa Blake, is the first of two yachts built to defend the cup.

"When I look at the boat, I see not only the hopes and dreams of everybody in New Zealand, but every single person in the team, and their spirit is represented in that boat," Oliver said.

"We have had a lot of ups and downs over the last couple of years and we have come to this day with a strength of character which should be unstoppable."

Team NZ skipper Dean Barker said the yacht was the best so far.

"The feeling in the team is one of determination mixed with enthusiasm for the job ahead."

Barker said the team would work six days a week and the mast and sail programme would step up a gear.

Oliver said that Team NZ being cast as underdogs did not bother them.

"Last time, we made two lovely boats and we really didn't know until we got to the starting line how it was going to be - and that hasn't changed."

An American, Oliver helped design Dennis Conner's winning boat in 1987 and the infamous catamaran, before joining the New Zealand Challenge in 1992.

He said launching a new boat was still a thrill.

"It is very exciting," he said. "It is unbelievable. You look at the boat and you see the shapes and think, 'that turned out nicely' or 'I like the look of that.'

"We had good science, good Kiwi ingenuity and we had an attitude about sailing here in the Gulf which comes from when most of these guys were babies sailing in these little boats in 30-knot winds.

"That kind of fearless attitude has carried through into the design programme."

Oliver said Team NZ had done everything to ensure they had a yacht which was faster than the rest and faster than the one they had last time .

"We have used aerodynamics, hydrodynamics, structural engineering and all the sciences associated with that to put together a boat which we believe is the best we can do."

With just over a month until the start of the Louis Vuitton Challenger series, Oliver said all of the syndicates would have used Team NZ's 2000 winning yacht, NZL60, as a starting point.

"Most of the challengers are falling in line with what the norm is ... pretty much the boat which won the America's Cup last time.

"The beams are a little different, the bows are a little different, but this group of boats is going to be quite close in performance. There is one group which is a little different and that is Oracle and we'll see what their ideas are when the challengers start racing.

"But for us, we will not know until February 15 if we have done our job."

Team New Zealand's second boat, NZL82, is due out of the boat yard in six weeks.

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