All around the Great Sound, there were relics of America’s Cups past – the majestic J Class boats of the 1930s lined with legends of New Zealand sailing.
Legs adorned with lucky red socks swung over the railings of the classic yachts. On board Ranger, the American boat that successfully defended the 1937 America’s Cup from the British Endeavour II, was KZ7 bowman Erle Williams at the helm, and former Team New Zealand rock-stars Joey Allen and Brad Butterworth in the crew.
“We’re onboard a winning American boat that’s flying a New Zealand flag. Unheard of!” said Allen, a former Cup coach, who these days plies his trade as an Auckland builder.
But nowhere on the Bermudian racecourse today were ghosts of former Cups apparent. Not even a vestige of that dreadful regatta in San Francisco four years ago that Kiwis are so desperate to forget.
Instead it was a composed and confident Emirates Team New Zealand who lined up on the opening day of the 35th America’s Cup today, and calmly went to work, convincingly taking the first two races off their adversaries Oracle Team USA.
For five of the six crew on Team NZ’s black and red cat, it was their first America’s Cup match. But if they were green, it didn’t show.
“Who’s going to tell that kid he’s in the first race of the America’s Cup?” American commentator Ken Read asked the television audience, as Kiwi helmsman Peter Burling held the wheel like he was on a Sunday cruise to Waiheke.
It was a performance that wasn’t without its mistakes, but the Kiwi crew held their nerve multiple times – in the crucial pre-starts and in pressurised gate roundings – as the more experienced men of Oracle breathed heavily down their necks.
Burling came off the water typically relaxed, wearing his trademark wry grin: “It was really fun yachting out there. It felt like our boat was going really fast, which is something that’s really pleasing.”
Joey Allen, who was a coach to the Team NZ crew in the 2013 Cup, was almost blown away by what he witnessed on the water today.
“As an old burned-out coach, I find them a pretty formidable team,” he said.
“What’s really interesting to me is how critical they are. They don’t care what they did well; they talk through where they went wrong, but then they’re straight into the next race. They’re all about self-improvement. That’s something we’ve been guilty of not doing in the past, and it’s an amazing difference.
“Where you will see a real difference is if, and when, they drop a race. It won’t affect their attitude. This is a different bunch of guys, who come from Olympic backgrounds. They’ve sailed thousands of boat races, and if they lose one, they don’t even have to heal. They almost enjoy being beaten now and again so they can learn from it, and come back stronger.”
Although both of Team NZ’s victories will go down in the history books as conclusive – with margins of 30s and 1m 28s respectively – no-one would dare pronounce them as a sign that the Kiwis will have the upper-hand throughout this first-to-seven series.
“Who’s going to tell that kid he’s in the first race of the America’s Cup?”
The light winds on the Great Sound today, between seven and 10 knots, were in Team New Zealand’s favoured zone – and they were noticeably quicker, sailing on their famous “kinked” foils. More of the same is predicted for tomorrow’s two races, but with a five-day pause until day three, the wind conditions on this isolated Atlantic island could change wildly.
The hiatus in racing could also allow the defender to make alterations to their cat which could make them faster. We’ve seen it all before.
And Spithill, one of the great competitors in modern-day sport, admitted his crew had made more mistakes than the Kiwis on day one, and promised to “come out swinging” tomorrow. We know the pugilist in Spithill can do that, too.
Team NZ won’t change their attitude for the next two races, but they plan to change some of their practices. On returning to base, they immediately debriefed on a day speckled with crew misjudgements.
“We’re not happy with the way we sailed today… even though we’re pretty pleased with the outcome,” Burling said afterwards. “We definitely had a lot of issues out there, to let them back into the game after some pretty big leads. But I’m really happy the guys showed composure to hold on to those leads and convert them.”
One area where they didn’t have trouble was in the starting box. Any residual worries about Burling’s ability to start well were washed away, when he twice out-witted Spithill at the line. “Spithill has been banging on about Team NZ’s starts being a weakness,” Allen says. “Well, he can stop banging on about that now.”
In the first race, Team NZ pushed Oracle over the line before the starter’s gun, forcing them to drop back two-boatlengths before they reached mark one. Spithill claimed to have had software glitches in the pre-start, but Burling definitely had it over him.
At the second start, when it looked as though Oracle had the Team NZ boat pinned to the layline, Burling wriggled out of the trap, managed to hold his nerve, and accelerated off the line faster to roll over Oracle to lead at the first mark again.
So far throughout this regatta, Team NZ have never been overtaken when they’ve rounded mark one ahead.
There were times, today, however, when Oracle had the opportunity to overhaul the challengers. The easterly breeze at the top of the racecourse was puffy and shifty – the kind of jittery conditions where massive leads can evaporate in seconds.
When Team NZ had an almost two-minute lead at the penultimate gate of race one with their faster speed upwind, mistakes crept in. A couple of poor manoeuvres allowed Oracle to edge closer on the downwind run, but not close enough to change the outcome.
It happened again in the second race, when Team NZ were faster downwind. Then Oracle tactician Tom Slingsby spotted a prosperous streak of wind on the second upwind leg – slicing a 1m 34s lead to 3s at the gate.
“Team NZ had to quickly tack on top of them, round the mark, then gybe – and they nailed it,” Allen said. Oracle, meanwhile, fell off their foils and almost came to a halt, allowing the Kiwis to burn off again.
Where there was hand shaking on Team NZ at the finish line, there was head shaking on the other boat. Spithill wasn’t smiling at the end of a “tough day”.
“Clearly, we weren’t sailing at our best, but we also had our opportunities… These guys made fewer mistakes. The good news is we are only one back.”
That may sound confusing, but Team NZ are now only 1-0 up – having started on minus one, courtesy of Oracle’s bonus for winning the qualifiers series.
“It’s no secret that to win the America’s Cup, in our case, we have to win eight races,” Burling said.
“It’s been a long time since we’ve raced these guys. We’ve obviously done a massive amount of work to the boat, and how we sail the boat; pretty much every aspect of our campaign. We’re really happy where we checked back in today. But we’re under no illusions that we have a lot of hard work to do, to keep pushing forward. And that’s exactly what we intend to do.”
Joey Allen, a two-time Cup winner, knows only too well that the development can never stop in an America’s Cup match. But he hopes that at least sailors were able to switch off at the end of the day.
“A lot of it is about recovery. Hopefully [coaches] Ray Davies and Murray Jones got them straight in off the water, analysed what they’d done, and what to learn from their mistakes, then sat them down in front of a cowboy movie,” he said.
“They need to completely turn their brains off, so they can smash it out of the ballpark tomorrow.”
