The New Zealand Herald

Modified Oracle boat back on water with slight tweaks

- Dana Johannsen

Oracle Team USA have returned to the water with a couple of slight tweaks to USA-17, but nothing that will amount to “knots of boatspeed”, says Team New Zealand skipper Glenn Ashby.

Trailing Emirates Team New Zealand 3-0 in the first-to-seven series (4-0 on the water) after the opening weekend of racing in the America’s Cup match, a five-day break in the schedule to maximise television audiences has afforded Oracle the opportunit­y to review their set-up.

Oracle skipper Jimmy Spithill admitted Team NZ had a clear speed advantage over the US boat, and said they needed to make “serious changes” if they were to revive their hopes of the “three-peat”.

After a day in the boatshed, the defender was back out on the Great Sound yesterday. So too was the Team NZ chase boat, with the Kiwis closely monitoring Oracle’s progress.

Ashby said Oracle appeared to have made a couple of adjustment­s to their foils and wing set-up, but the biggest change was in the way the US team are sailing their boat.

“Having a look at them sailing today they’ve made a couple of changes heading more towards our direction with the way they’re sailing the boat and also their wing set-up. I noticed they were trimming their twist a lot more than they have done in the past, which is something we have been working on for quite a while now,” said Ashby, the team’s wing trimmer.

“There’s not a huge amount they can change with their set-up that’s going to make a massive difference. It’s going to make incrementa­l difference­s, but I don’t think it will be knots of boatspeed like we saw in the previous campaign.

“There’s not really anything we were looking at thinking that’s really different to what we’re doing.”

Team NZ’s head of design Dan Bernasconi echoed Ashby’s observatio­ns on the set-up of the Oracle boat, and believed the biggest gains Spithill and his crew can make will be out on the water.

“They look to have changed the

There’s not a huge amount they can change. I don’t think it will be knots of boatspeed like in the previous campaign. Team NZ skipper Glenn Ashby

way they set up their foils, and the way they’re trimming their wing. There’s obviously a limit to the changes they can physically make to the boat in five days, but there are a lot of changes you can make to the way you sail the boat.”

The New Zealand crew were not out training yesterday, with the team’s sleek 50ft catamaran still undergoing refinement­s. Ashby said the team will be back out on the Great Sound today with a long list of workons to get through.

“Our plan is definitely to get back out on the water and keep refining and keep improving ourselves,” the Australian multihull specialist said.

“There’s still as much on the table in terms of technique as there is in improvemen­ts on the boat. We’ll certainly be getting out there and working on how we sail the boat and try to keep our percentage of good performanc­e up around the track as high as we can for as long as we can.”

When the television-driven, stopstart regatta resumes this Sunday racing will run daily until a winner is found.

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