TEAM AUSTRALIA UPDATE: GLENN ASHBY

Pride courses through every vein, but he knows full well that just being on the starting line in Naples in 2027, is a victory of sorts given the tight timeline Team Australia gave themselves since entering. Glenn was supposed to be in the famous Model Room of the New York Yacht Club on Friday 16^th October being honoured by the America’s Cup Hall of Fame as one of this year’s inductees to the coveted association run by the Herreshoff Museum, but unfortunately a family issue kept him away. Ever resourceful, Glenn was beamed into the ceremony on a live link, wearing a full dinner suit and accepted his honour from former Cup winner Gary Jobson alongside honours for the late Lowell North, Peter Isler and the Beken of Cowes family.

Ahead of the dinner, we caught up with Glenn to get an update on Team Australia who are very much on schedule with the boatworks to adapt the AC75 ‘Te Rehutai’ – the 2021 winning boat of Emirates Team New Zealand that the team have acquired. Asked how it was coming along, Glenn offered: “Really, really good is the answer. I actually got back just from New Zealand yesterday. I’ve been over there for the week. The painting of the boat has just been completed, so all the retro fit for the composite work for all the hull has just been done about a week ago, and then it’s gone straight into paint. It looks amazing. I’d love to be able to tell you what it looks like but it’s a bit of a surprise! Now we are basically doing structural testing next week, so rolling the boat upside down onto a jig, and then jacking the boat right up to full load, just to make sure that all the new mods are all good. It should be fine, but just to double check, and I think the Team New Zealand guys are really keen to do that. And then the following week, heaps of electronics and hydraulic fit-out is going on and we’re really needing it all to be done by Christmas time so it can go on the ship and actually start shipping across with all the equipment and containers and rig and everything from Southern Spars, over to Naples. So, it should arrive hopefully in February.”

A recent social media post showed an excited Glenn visiting the boat in the Emirates Team New Zealand compound and revealed a new stern section that looked very much in the current style of ‘Taihoro’ and her sister-ship of La Roche-Posay Racing Team: “Basically what we’ve done is effectively cut the back corners of the boat off and got rid of all the runner structure that was in the back of the boat, changed all that. And it’s made the boat lighter and we had to pull a bit of weight out, but aerodynamically, the boats are better with the tucked in transoms and lower weight, so it was a bit of a win-win and we made it better aerodynamically as well, so we’ve basically had the full transom adjustment, if you like. And obviously the new bow has gone on as well to meet the constructed in country rules and that was built at McConaghy Boats up in Gosford, just north of Sydney, then shipped across and glued on a couple of months ago. We took a little bit of weight out of the bow as well by taking out the bobstay and all the bowsprit material and structure that wasn’t necessary for the new rule. We managed to pull enough weight out to get it down to meet the rule, which was a big job, actually but the ETNZ guys did a great job - really, really good.”

Having won the America’s Cup for Emirates Team New Zealand in 2017 and defended it in 2021, Glenn is something of a legend within the team who then supported him to set a new win powered land-speed record in 2022 of 140.17 mph onboard the bespoke ‘Horonuku.’ Asked whether he was getting preferential treatment, Glenn laughed but was full of praise for the professionalism from both the boatbuilding and design side of the current Defenders: “The relationship has been incredible, and their workmanship and their attention to detail is really second to none. They’re absolute pros at what they do, and really for me, the ability to be able to make it to the start line in Naples is largely due to Team New Zealand being able to sell us a design package and then help execute the modifications on ‘Te Rehutai’ into the class legal 75 hull. They’ve been incredible, and I think that relationship, I guess, and knowing all the people that I’m dealing with really well has certainly been a great help and I think they’ve really enjoyed the process as well. You talk to the boat builders and the designers that have changed the boat, and they’ve all been absolutely stoked to be involved with the project and for them to give that boat another life, really a third life, not a second life-… a third life after they used it. They’re all absolutely stoked and I think it’s really turned into a great boat. I think they’re all very proud of it, as much as we are.”

When Team Australia confirmed their entry to the Louis Vuitton 38^th America’s Cup, they followed it quickly with an impressive line-up of sailors led by Olympic gold-medallist and America’s Cup winner Tom Slingsby. The squad has deep talent but the one question on everyone’s lips was who would partner Tom on co-helm. Glenn kept his cards close to his chest saying: Yeah, that’s a good question. We’ve actually got some really good cover there, and we’re actually mixing things up at the moment. We’ve got Jason Waterhouse, Tom Needham, Kinley Fowler, Sam Newton. We’re actually doing full rotation through a lot of the guys at the moment, so we haven’t actually locked any of those final positions in as yet, as we’re doing a lot of testing on the simulator and we’ll probably have an announcement on that, probably over the next month or so, I’d imagine.”

Clearly a few candidates for that coveted role have impressed with Glenn saying: “Tom Needham, and Jase Waterhouse are pretty handy. But we haven’t locked anything in as yet but they’re both going really well. And Tash Bryant, she’s actually giving the boys a real run for their money as far as the capabilities going. So, we’re very fortunate. We’ve actually got a really solid group in the sailing team side. Stand by on that one.”

To get an insight into Glenn’s winning mentality, when probed on just how large the scale of the challenge is to get the boat up to speed, he offered this: “I think after being involved with our camp with Team New Zealand in 2017, that 2015 and 2016 period where we were super late. The team nearly folded, and then we rebuilt the team. We had a super short runway. This campaign, it mirrored a lot of that. You need good people, you need to have belief, and you need to make good decisions right from the start of the program to have a chance of being successful. So that’s really what we’ve adopted is that mantra of we’ve got a short runway, but we need to make all our decisions count. And I think the people that we have involved are certainly experts and we all get along really, really well. I’m under no illusion that it’s a monumental task, but I know the path up to the top of the mountain so it’s just a matter of crawling my way up as quickly as I can at the moment!”

Team Australia have remarkable backing from John Winning, a champion sailor himself, plus the extended Winning family, and clearly there’s an excitement in bringing Australia back into the big time of America’s Cup racing. Glenn reflected on that saying: “I think for him to be in this position where he’s effectively founded the team, to get on the map again for Australia, I think he really does feel a great sense of satisfaction knowing that he’s been able to be the one to move all of Australia to get back on the map after, it’ll be 27 years since Australia was last involved with Young Australia with Jimmy Spithill and the young guys, and he feels a great sense of satisfaction, I think. There’s not many people in the world that have the ability or the want or the desire to do the America’s Cup, and he certainly does. So we’re very fortunate here in Australia that he’s stepped up to the plate and his family as well. It’s a big effort, and we’re just putting all the pieces of the puzzle together as best we possibly can to do as well as we possibly can with a short runway next year. And John’s a big part of that, for sure.”

Team Australia are in good hands under the leadership of Glenn Ashby, and they are a team with talent everywhere. One thing’s for sure – they’ll be tough to beat in Naples.