Winds were up (finally) to 20 knots on the final day of AC45 testing in Auckland. Matt Sheahan was on board filming.
Images courtesy of Gilles Martin Raget.
A good final day for the test period in Auckland as winds were up in the 20 knot range allowing the teams to stretch their legs.
Auckland gave teams spectacular conditions on the harbour, with strong winds, a moderate sea way and teams eager to show what the AC45s can do.
Emirates Team New Zealand and ORACLE Racing, in particular, as the two most experienced teams on the AC45s, took the opportunity to show off their skills.
”It’s a huge amount of fun,” said Dean Barker, skipper of Emirates Team New Zealand. “It’s definitely adrenaline sailing… The boats are great. They get up and go… It will be spectacular if we have 10 of them in that situation.”
While it was good for the teams to show the potential of racing these boats in stronger conditions, the main objective this week was to test media systems ahead of the first America’s Cup World Series event in August in Cascais.
And to that end, Gary Lovejoy, the Head of Media Production for the America’s Cup pronounced himself satisfied. ”i think we’ve had a good week,” he said. “One of the most important things is we’ve brought all of the new technologies that we’ve been talking about for many months and applied them to the boats and the racing and they actually worked.
”That may sound very basic but the technology that we’re talking about has to work… so the results we’ve had, where we’ve been able to get good performance out of the technology very quickly means we can now go on and build the editorial and creative side of the race coverage.”
Dean Barker, skipper of Emirates Team New Zealalnd discusses his day: