Team New Zealand’s America’s Cup crane debacle’s only certainty is uncertainty - Paul Lewis

A crane failure saw Team New Zealand's AC75 Taihoro land heavily on its cradle. Photo / America's Cup

THREE KEY FACTS

• Team New Zealand’s AC75 boat was damaged after falling from a crane in Barcelona
• The team are targeting a return to racing on Sunday NZT
• Day two of the Louis Vuitton Cup saw light winds, limiting racing

Paul Lewis is a veteran sports journalist who has written four books and covered Rugby World Cups, America’s Cups, Olympic and Commonwealth Games and more.

OPINION

You’d have to say someone from Emirates Team NZ’s large staff should be dispatched to one of Barcelona’s many estancos (tobacconists) to buy a ticket in Spain’s next El Gordo national lottery (literally “The Fat One”, with about $4.5 billion in prizes this year).

Because, man, they’ve been lucky. A crane had their whole $200 million America’s Cup campaign dangerously dangled in the air before dropping the six-tonne boat more than six metres, with its cradle apparently absorbing much of the impact. Team boss Grant Dalton has said only 20cm to either side and it could have been “a whole bunch worse”.

That’s a lot of dollars per centimetre.

Back in New Zealand and in traditional America’s Cup circles, plenty of people will have been sniggering. The wantaway Kiwis who took our America’s Cup to Spain dropped their high-spec, highly-tuned marine racehorse on the hard? Oh dear, how sad, never mind…

The traditionalists will have smiled because in the past (until Oracle Team USA invented it), it has never been the practice for the defender to race against the challengers in the Louis Vuitton Cup. Team NZ were initially critical but seemed to overcome their objections when they were in the driver’s seat. The jokes have started too – that the mafia paid off an Italian crane driver to benefit Luna Rossa, Team NZ’s most dangerous challenger.

However, all that schadenfreude appears thwarted. The team are assuring us they’ll be back on the water soon and have done a fine job in being transparent about doing so. Videos on YouTube show the Kiwis’ world-class shore crew going hard at it, working flat out, and Dalton has been interviewed happily talking about how lucky they were.

Normally in the America’s Cup, if there is a big problem with the boat, the shutters come down. Little is said. Secrets are have-to-kill-you kept. Such as in Bermuda in 2017, when the ETNZ boat pitch-poled, causing structural damage. The shore crew, under head boat builder and fixit guru Sean Regan, pulled all-nighters then too, getting the boat back on the water in a regatta won comfortably.

No videos then. What we didn’t know until after the Cup was that their foils were damaged – but somehow held together. This time, we also don’t know if the critical foils, or any other delicate equipment inside the AC75 yacht, have been damaged.

There’s a reason why Team NZ – and all teams – have personnel as the single biggest cost in their campaigns. We’re seeing it now. Regan has been with Team NZ since 1992. Regarded as a world leader in his trade, he has worked with Team NZ on their IACC 25m monohull yachts in Valencia, 2007, and the foiling catamarans of San Francisco and Bermuda in 2013 and 2017 before today’s AC75 foiling monohulls.

His team, he has often said, work flat out at any job they are assigned because not only is time money; time is a different sort of currency too – opportunity is lost when the sailing team could be on the water, with the boffins crunching the data to test, refine and tweak the multimillion-dollar yachts to develop, improve and speed them up.

At the 36th America’s Cup in Auckland in 2021, American Magic weren’t so lucky. Their crash saw the boat with structural problems and, although they got back on the water and raced, they were never quite the same.

Team NZ’s luck has also held with the weather. Day two of the Louis Vuitton saw such light breezes that the big AC75s wallowed off their foils a lot, looking a bit like ducks who’d strayed too close to the mai mai. Not much racing lost there.

So, if Dalton and the shore crew are right, they will likely be back with a repaired hull and racing in the Louis Vuitton again, with maybe a day or two sailing on their own to fix any bugs from the repairs – and they could be back in action on September 3 or 4, when they are due to face Luna Rossa and Ineos GB respectively (with September 4 maybe ideal?).

However, there is still a lot we don’t know – and probably won’t until the end of this regatta. Like what actually happened? Team NZ and other teams have been heaving these giant foiling yachts out of the water by crane for 12-13 years now. It’s a delicate but much-practised manoeuvre.

There is talk a power cut happened at the worst moment. But cranes have built-in systems that guard against such things. Was there operator error? Was there equipment failure? Did someone pull the wrong lever in a moment of pressure?

Only one thing is certain right now – there will be an exhaustive, intensive inquiry behind the scenes and, at a guess, a Spanish crane hire company will have already received an urgent phone call.