Wide awake, sailing blind

By MICHAEL DALY

Team New Zealand will, naturally, be keeping an eye on the Louis Vuitton Cup challenger races, but the rest of their attention will be concentrated on improving their own performance.

What they could learn from the challenger series was limited, said Tom Schnackenberg, Team New Zealand head and design co-ordinator.

But they were still keeping "one eye on the challengers, just like a dog that never sleeps."

Watching their rivals racing was not particularly scientific.

"You don't really know what's going on aboard the boat, except for what comes through on television."

Team New Zealand could not even work out how fast the challengers were going.

"You don't actually know how much breeze they've got. It's such a particular thing," he said. "We have enough trouble between our two yachts when they're 50m apart.

"We've got instruments on both boats and they're calibrated. We know the calibrations and we work on them daily.

"We're so close we can see the wind in their sails and the wind on the water beside them. We still have trouble."

The performance difference among the top contenders was about 1.5 per cent, Schnackenberg said.

"So you would have to know the wind within the same 1.5 per cent before you can measure.

"The audience - that's all of us - won't really know the difference between the challengers and defenders [before racing]."

What Team New Zealand would watch for among the challengers would be little hints about all aspects of the teams' performances, such as sail handling, manoeuvring, starting techniques, and strengths and weaknesses of the boats, he said.

And by looking at such things as sail size, it could be possible to estimate performance differences between yachts under certain weather conditions.

"So going into the cup you've got a wee bit of that background information, and a wee bit of speculation, and the rest of it's based on what seems like the strong points of the challenger when he's racing against the others."

The team were now racing their new yacht, NZ81, against the 2000 cup winner, NZL60. When their second new boat, NZ82, was ready, probably late this month, it would replace NZL60.

The holders missed the intensity of racing against the enemy, while the challengers could hone their skills in competition, Schnackenberg said.

"And we miss the ideas you might get from racing against somebody who's totally outside the team, who does something totally unexpected ...

"You miss the adrenalin rush of going racing, then coming ashore, fixing the boat, having a beer and feeling happy that you just won."

An advantage for the holders was that they could use their time more efficiently, not being bound by a schedule, and had the flexibility to do things such as have two short races in one day.

It would be hard for challengers to disguise any advantage they might have. One way would be to go into a group of races with their second-best boat.

Alinghi's decision to use SUI64, rather than SUI75, raised the issue of whether that was really their best boat, Schnackenberg said.

"Is it because 64 is their favourite boat, or is it because the boats are similar, and they think maybe 64 is good enough to win a lot of races, and 75 might be the boat they want to race later on, or is 64 really their best boat?

"The answer is ... we don't know. It's for them to know, and everyone else to guess."

- NZPA

nzherald.co.nz/americascup

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