Barker backed by skipper

‘There’s no one else we’d rather have on the wheel than him,’ says Hutchinson

American Magic skipper Terry Hutchinson has refused to blame Kiwi helmsman Dean Barker for their team’s dramatic capsize on Sunday that caused substantial damage to their boat and put their Prada Cup future in doubt.

The Americans have been in recovery mode since the tip in the day’s second race against Luna Rossa, a race Hutchinson and Co were leading comfortably before a sharp turn around the final mark in strong winds saw the AC75 lift out of the water before slamming back down.

Barker, who had come under fire in the first two days of the challenger series, with American Magic failing to win a single race, cut a dejected figure while opposing syndicates, officials and police fought for hours to save the boat.

Barker’s decision to attempt a precarious manoeuvre in high winds has been questioned but, according to Hutchinson, the Americans “win and lose as a team”.

“Dean’s a critical part of that [the team]. I’ve encouraged him since we started this programme — just be Dean Barker, don’t be anything different. We want the person that has all the intensity he has but also has a certain level of demeanour about him which makes him the perfect person to sail this boat. He has a little ice water in his veins, which is what the boat requires,” Hutchinson told a press conference yesterday.

“When we go sailing the next time, I’ll always encourage him, ‘don’t take your foot off the pedal’. We have, as a team, the utmost confidence in him and his abilities. There’s no one else we’d rather have on the wheel than him.”

Hutchinson says the conditions changed constantly in the race, which made things immensely difficult.

“Forty seconds before we tacked, it was blowing 121⁄ knots of wind, and

2 when we tacked . . . it was blowing 231⁄ knots of wind. When you look at the wind graph, the time from 18 knots to 23 knots is about three seconds. There was a lot of turbulent wind condition [on Sunday].

“You get the boat into a spot where you have to race the boat hard, the boat is very unforgiving . . . When you throttle back, you’re at as much risk when you pull your foot off the gas pedal as when you have it on it.”

The skipper shed further light on the communication on board just before the fateful tack.

“Coming into the mark, there’s a lot of discussion around the right gate being favoured. You hear Dean saying ‘ well, we should tack bear way’, and you hear Goodie [Paul Goodison] say ‘it’s a hard manoeuvre’, and then you hear Andrew [ Campbell] say ‘right gate by 100m but really light’.

“I trust Andrew and Dean, as we all do . . . we trust them with our lives. When one of those guys makes a comment and you hear him in his tone about being light, you take him seriously. Interestingly enough, Luna Rossa followed us around the left gate, so there must be something to it when you’re sitting there and looking at the breeze.”

Hutchinson is confident in the team picking themselves up, saying they have “an incredible amount of resolve to it” and they’re “going to do whatever it takes”.

He says the hole in the hull, which led to the boat filling with water and come dangerously close to sinking, was caused by the way it slammed on the water after essentially flying up amid the gusts, where “the structure inside the yacht just guillotined the panel”.

The team will use the carbon body of first boat Defiant to patch up the hole on Patriot, Hutchinson said.