TEAM EMIRATES – Meet the Shore Team: OLIVIER BRETON
ROLE: Hydraulics Engineer
BEST THING ABOUT YOUR JOB: Developing systems that are efficient and reliable.
THE AMERICA’S CUP: Its about winning the oldest trophy in sport with good team spirit.
Its a lot about the team spirit.
AC WORLD SERIES – Here is a replay of Day #1 in Naples.
NZ SPIES – Opps do you think they saw us?? Who is checking out the competition up in SF? We know…do you? He is a local designer and loves to sail A-class cats…EMAIL US AT [email protected]
AC NEWS – Emirates Team New Zealand photographer Chris Cameron spends a lot of his life bouncing around in a chase boat as he chronicles the progress of the team’s challenge for the 34th America’s Cup through his lens.
His pictures go far and wide – through the internet and publication in newspapers and magazines.
For him no assignment has more interest than photographing the historic meetings of two AC72s on the water off Auckland.
He shoots hundreds of pictures on an average day, then starts the laborious process of downloading to his computer, image selection and distribution.
AC NEWS - TV3 sailing reporter Greg Pearson had a day out on the AC72. On the tow out he got a few minutes to sit down and get an update on the Emirates Team New Zealand campaign with Grant Dalton including finding out that Boat #2 is “way underway” and will be ready by February.
AC NEWS – Emirates Team New Zealand is ratcheting up its AC72 sailing programme, moving on from primarily conducting reliability and system testing to a focus on racing and speed development.
The yacht will go into the shed for 10 days for, amongst other things, modifications that are designed to extract greater performance from the boat.
Grant Dalton says: “After 16 days on the water, we are comfortable with the boat and we can work on building speed by developing on-board systems and racing mechanics and giving the sailing crew time to develop communications and boat handling.
“The design department has collated and analysed a massive amount of data every time the 72 has sailed and has come up with some changes that we expect will improve performance.”
Chris Cameron’s aerial pictures from this week’s testing are here.
Click here to share TVNZ’s Martin Tasker’s on the water experience
Amongst the obvious changes are fairings which are designed to reduce windage and therefore drag will be installed on the back beam and elsewhere. We have not done this before because the fairings make access needed to tune various systems and visual checks of the structure more difficult
“Once we have completed the work, the team will back into on-the-water testing and spending time on sailing crew development.”
TEAM EMIRIATES – Final day of racing in San Francisco, what they refer to as ‘Super Sunday’! Hanging tou with Emirates Team New Zealand
AC NEWS – The process of measuring the new AC72′s is a complex one. America’s Cup measurer Shaun Ritson, has begun the long process of making sure the ETNZ AC72 is legal to race in San Francisco next year.
MOVING PICTURES – ETNZ Team performance and systems analyst Luc Du Bois uses a bit of kiwi ingenuity to calibrate the AC72′s wind instruments prior to the next days sailing on Auckland’s Hauraki Gulf.
TEAM EMIRATES – Back from the ACWS and on the water at home already. Just another big, long, exhilarating day on the water for the NZ team with the AC72. Check out the foils on the daggerboards.
AC 72 UPDATE - Coach Rod Davis blogs on how the big cat sends a shiver down the spine of even a hardened offshore sailor…..
As things stand now, it’s intimidating, standing 40 metres tall and weighing less than 6000 kilos. The power and potential “doomsday scenarios” of the new AC72 can send a shiver down even the most hardened round-the-world sailor’s back. That will diminish with the new cat’s every outing.
The vision of being trapped under the trampoline after a violent capsize, and having to use the emergency air bottle, or having to take your knife to cut your way thought the tramp to get to the surface, or both, will fade as the reality of preparing to race takes over.
We have seen before, well some of us have.
As with the 150ft KZ1 and the first IACC boats, they get smaller and more manageable as you get used to them. It’s like learning to drive a car. The first time behind the wheel, your eyes are as big as saucers. Now you just hop in, turn the key and you’re off.
By the time we take the cat to San Francisco for the Challenger series, we (and all the other teams) will be throwing the boats around like we do the AC-45 right now.
But for the next month or so, we will suffer a bit in the dark side before breaking through to the light.
That is the nature of doing things that have never been done before. Things will not always work the way we intend, things will break or fail, and the odd mishap (operator error) will be hanging over our heads like a dark cloud, but only in the early stages.
The best defence? Hope for the best, plan for the worst.
I can’t wait to get past sorting out the boat and systems and get on with preparing to race. Because at the end of the day, it is a sail-boat race.
AMERICAS CUP – Our report from Auckland as Emirates Team New Zealand roll out their towering wing sail and brand new AC72 catamaran:
Office workers on their way to work stopped in their tracks around the Auckland Viaduct as Emirates Team New Zealand’s AC72 wing rose above its base and hung in the early morning air.
The operation appeared to go very smoothly. The wing rolled out of its tent enclosure shortly after 7am and around 8am the hulls came out of their separate enclosure to be united for the first time.
As the wing was slowly lowered onto the main beam, spectators across the water burst into spontaneous applause. A live-aboard cruiser on a small catamaran moored directly opposite the Emirates Team New Zealand base, whooped and hollered in delight. “Man, that is so cool,” he exclaimed.
In the still air of an Auckland mid-winter morning, the wing was a thing of grace, hanging in the low sunlight and stirring to even the slightest movement in the air.
AMERICAS CUP - The chase cat that is! Curly Salthouse & team designer Pete Melvin worked on the concept and design of the 45 ft cat which is capable of speeds of over 50 knots if required.
Day two at the AC Worlds Series, despite losing a man overboard, New Zealand sails in good form to lead the fleet at the end of the day. For complete details and more video go to Americas Cup
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