The Youth Brigade

For the first time since the reign of Oracle Team USA, the America’s Cup has two American challengers competing for an opportunity to face Emirates Team New Zealand

If you met Mike Buckley and Taylor Canfield a year ago, it would’ve likely been on the docks, them in neoprene and holding helmets, or at the bar in jeans, hanging loose in untucked shirts and flatbrimmed hats. You would’ve met a couple of pro sailors, living the dream, getting paid to sail cool boats, and winning regattas. And when you met them, you would never imagine they’d soon be launching a multimillion- dollar America’s Cup campaign. In foiling 75- footers that have never been proven. In Auckland, in three years. These hip, young sailors?

Indeed, they are, and a Cup campaign is a colossal and expensive undertaking, but it’s Buckley’s big dream. Sophisticated and recently married, he’s now putting his business acumen to good use. In forming Stars & Stripes Team USA, he’s joined with 30-yearold Canfield, one of the world’s best match racers in everything from high-performance cats to Catalina 37s.

Canfield, a U.S. Virgin Islander who is wellrespected by those he’s dismissed on the racecourse, is expected to be the face of the franchise and most likely the one with his hands on the wheel of the team’s AC75. “I think this will be a defining moment for American sailing,” he says. “I am confident we will be very competitive in Auckland.”

The team will sail under the burgee of California’s Long Beach YC, where Canfield is welcomed as royalty in his Crimson Blazer. With Buckley, from New York, and Canfield essentially East Coasters, how is it they landed in Long Beach?

“We were trying to get the right fit,” Buckley says. “There are so many great clubs in the United States, and we had to see which one felt like home. That’s what it feels like in Long Beach Yacht Club. Taylor has won four Congressional Cups there and they love him in that city. We hope that we can involve all yacht clubs, but Long Beach is home.”

The team’s presence in Long Beach is set to grow exponentially after sailing trials and athlete combines early in the year. With only 11 sailors on the AC75, team COO Tod Reynolds says they don’t need a whole team of yachties from Olympic classes — they’re looking for athletes capable of delivering continuous power on demand. The final roster, Buckley says, will be 100-percent American, and coed.

The team announced itself formally in December 2018, with the blessing of Dennis Conner to use the Stars & Stripes brand. “We are the next generation,” Buckley says. “We feel honored to revive that legacy and met with Dennis in person, where he affirmed both our use of the name as well as our goal to create an authentic and inclusive American team.”

With a late start relative to the other domestic and properly funded challenger — the New York YC’S American Magic — Buckley and Co. took a prudent route to building its AC75, purchasing a design package from defender Emirates Team New Zealand.

There were two options, Reynolds says: go all-in and hire 40 or more of the best designers and engineers with experience, or buy the design package and grow the team organically with “some next-generation minds.”

“The problem with that approach is the boats are so complicated that it would not be safe,” he says. Theirs, instead, is a hybrid method. “It [ the design package] is essentially Team New Zealand’s first boat, so we have a safe and reliable package that allows us to build up our own internal team, improve on the design, and [train] people for the long term.”

For invaluable Cup experience, they will lean heavily upon J. B. Braun, who’s been in the Cup game for two decades. He’s the director of design and engineering with North Sails and directed Oracle Team USA’S sail- and- rig package for the 34th and 35th editions of the Cup, so he knows plenty of both the aero and foil elements of the equation. With Braun comes North Sails, its design resources and another key technical partner.

Braun, from Marblehead, Massachusetts, will see and hear plenty from Holland, Michigan, over the next few years as Stars & Stripes elected to build its boat at Composite Builders.

Buckley says the decision to build in Holland is to be “in the manufacturing capital of America, building a boat.”

With enough funding to launch, and the search for more continuing, the first of potentially two boats is well underway and expected to be wet by late summer. By late February, resumes from young, hungry American hopefuls — both sailing and shore team — were pouring in and crew tryouts were underway in Long Beach.

Meanwhile, Buckley and Taylor, along with the team’s CEO, Justin Schaffer, were making the publicity rounds, building the team’s fan base and spreading the word that they’re the one true allAmerican challenger. One year ago, it didn’t seem plausible for these young rock stars to be considered a threat, but Ben Ainslie, head of the British challenger, INEOS Team UK, says they are indeed a going consideration.

Reynolds likes his team’s chances too. “A few years ago, I thought Mike was crazy, knowing how hard these campaigns are,” he says. “But there is something special here. It’s Mike’s vision to be authentically All- American, and the team he continues to build around him shows the time is now.” Q