THE CAT CAME BACK!
Team NZ breezes into final
Pitchpoled into the whipped up waters of Bermuda’s Great Sound, Team New Zealand’s America’s Cup challenge quite literally teetered on the brink.
It’s hard to know what was running through the mind of the preternaturally composed helmsman Peter Burling as he sat suspended in the airborne starboard hull after Wednesday’s shocking capsize, but it was unlikely to have been, “I wonder who we’ll face in the final?”
Just 48 hours after the nearcatastrophic crash, Emirates Team New Zealand secured their place in the America’s Cup challenger final with a courageous show of sailing.
Putting aside the nerves, the doubts and the questions over the reliability of their battered boat, the Kiwi team notched up the required two wins to wrap up their semifinal series against British outfit Ben Ainslie Racing.
There were a couple of stumbles along the way. An issue with their port daggerboard in the prestart of the opening race seemed to confirm fears the New Zealand boat may still have “a few gremlins in the system” after being submerged.
Team NZ recovered from the setback, overhauling a 26- second deficit to notch up a confidence- boosting win — only to, as skipper Glenn Ashby so colourfully put it, “sail like a bucket of spanners”, in the second race of the day
Under intense pressure to stitch up the series in the third race and give the crew a much- needed day off after a draining week, not to mention buying the shore team some precious extra hours refining the New Zealand boat, Burling and co delivered their most comprehensive performance of what must surely have been the most dramatic semifinal series in America’s Cup history.
That Team NZ were even out on the race course yesterday was quite remarkable.
The cat came back — not the very next day, but the team says it could have, thanks to the endurance of the shore crew, who worked through the night painstakingly piecing the boat back together.
The damage was significant, but aside from the mangled wingsail, upon which the boat came to rest following its terrifying plunge, it was mostly cosmetic. The force of the water as the bows dug deep into the Great Sound ripped most of the aerodynamic fairings from the boat.
“They have quite a good warranty if they’re in the air, but not so good if they’re under water,” Ashby joked.
As the team’s wing trimmer — a highly specialised artform involving micro- adjustments to the towering 24m wingsail that powers the boat — it particularly pained Ashby to see the wing in such bad shape.
“It hurts seeing my baby all banged up like that,” he said as he cast his eye across to the skeletal remnants.
The team’s family and friends felt that hurt as well. Once they knew their loved ones were safe, their attention turned to what shape the catamaran named Aotearoa would be in