For Emirates Team New Zealand, the year 2005 is another step on the road to recovery following the disastrous 2003 campaign that saw the team lose the America’s Cup to Alinghi. The new Kiwi team, under the leadership of Grant Dalton, has firmly put that disappointment behind it, and appears to be moving forward at full speed.
Emirates Team New Zealand burst from the gate in winning the 2004 America’s Cup Class season championship. The 2005 season wasn’t as successful on paper, but the team managed to hang on to second place on the season championship board, behind Alinghi, and sits second on the Louis Vuitton Ranking behind BMW ORACLE Racing.
Dean Barker
In the match races of the 2005 Louis Vuitton Acts, skipper Dean Barker and his tactician Terry Hutchinson beat their main rival among the challengers, BMW ORACLE Racing, in two of three matches and defeated Luna Rossa all three times they faced them. However the Kiwis never beat Alinghi and lost two matches that most observers would say should have been ‘sure things’ against +39 Challenge (Act 4) and K-Challenge (Louis Vuitton Act 8).
In fleet racing, the team had two third place finishes sandwiched around a fourth place result in Malmö-Skåne.
“To me, we’ve sailed better and better since Valencia and yet that was our best result,” said a somewhat frustrated Terry Hutchinson (tactician) after the last race in Trapani. “I’m not sure what that means. As a team, you have to go through some of these highs and lows and these experiences where you’re not firing on all cylinders. It’s all there for our team; it’s just a matter of keeping it all together for another 18 months. But we’re still being beaten by people so we have to keep working at it. As we go forward and as the pressure gets turned up more and more, that (experience we have) will be a bigger positive factor for us. We’re very optimistic about the future. In the match racing, I’d have to rate us pretty high.”
New team, new attitude
Hutchinson himself is one of the men who can take a large part of the credit for the turn-around in attitude
Terry Hutchinson
on the squad. From a team hanging its head after defeat in Auckland in 2003, the Kiwis have regained a little bit of swagger and each good result sees them put a little more confidence in the bank. Hutchinson, along with Dalton, wasn’t with the team in the last Cup and so they don’t have any demons lingering from that experience. Hutchinson’s relationship with helmsman Dean Barker appears to be blossoming with each event, to the point that a good level of trust and understanding now exists between the two stalwarts of the afterguard.
"Probably the best thing that happened was that we won the Louis Vuitton Acts in 2004 (the season championship). Whether we liked each other or not, we gained instant respect for each other's ability," Hutchinson recalled in an interview in Trapani. "It is a relationship that has to work for the team to be successful. You just don't want to screw it up because we have such a good opportunity here."
And… a new boat
It’s an opportunity that will only be realised however, if the new boats are up to speed. The Emirates squad is among the first teams due to launch a new boat, with NZL 84 hitting a couple days ago. Many of the Emirates Team New Zealand sailors have a ‘difficult’ relationship with NZL 82, the boat they raced this year, as it was the one which let them down in 2003, and then was damaged in the storm after the Marseille regatta in 2004.
“We’re looking forward to our new boat, we’re looking forward to sailing it early next year and putting through its paces against 82,” confirmed Barker after racing finished in Trapani. The Kiwis will take advantage of the Southern hemisphere summer to sail through the European winter.
“We’re hopeful we’ve made some good steps forward. We’re looking forward to finally resting 82 and moving on. It’s been a bit of a love/hate relationship with that boat, I have to say. NZL 84 is the next one and it would be pretty nice if it was faster everywhere. Alinghi has set a very high benchmark, which all the teams are looking to achieve and then better. To win the next Cup you’re going to have to be better in all conditions, upwind and downwind.”
On the other hand, “NZL 82 has done a lot for us,” Hutchinson says. “Ironically the accident turned out good for us in that the designers and technicians discovered things about this boat. I think the guys who were on the boat last time were pretty disappointed in how the boat worked for them then and the Kiwis who were on the team then are pretty much happy to be done with it. Having said that, it was way better than the boats I was sailing in the last Cup, so I'm pretty happy with it!
“We've made such great strides as a group of sailors that now we have to really emphasise the hardware for the next year and really get the boat to a point that it's so blisteringly fast that it doesn't matter how many shifts I miss or starts that we're just even on. Clearly that's Alinghi's motto. They seem to be able to start pretty conservatively in the middle of the line or be late at the weather end by four or five seconds and it really doesn't appear to matter…they’re still winning races. I think there are some good lessons we can learn there.”
The following table shows all race results from the three Match Racing Acts of the 2005 season: Valencia Louis Vuitton Act 4, Malmö-Skåne Louis Vuitton Act 6 and Trapani Louis Vuitton Act 8. The right column shows the total amount of points gained against each team throughout the year. The bottom row shows the total amount of races won per Louis Vuitton Act.
0
0
0
0
vs
1
0
1
2
vs
1
0
1
2
vs
1
1
1
3
vs
1
1
1
3
vs
1
1
0
2
vs
1
1
1
3
vs
1
1
1
3
vs
1
1
1
3
vs
1
1
1
3
vs
1
1
1
3
vs
10
8
9
Emirates Team New Zealand: Fleet Racing in 2005
The following table lists all finishes during the three Fleet Racing Acts of the 2005 season: Valencia Louis Vuitton Act 5, Malmö-Skåne Louis Vuitton Act 7 and Trapani Louis Vuitton Act 9. The curve of the results charts the progress of the team over the year.
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