The Yachting Year 2018

THE YACHTING YEAR 2018 | 21

Peter Burling is a star – probably the finest helmsman in the world

ABOVE: New

Zealand gets its

hands on the

America’s Cup

WORDS DAVID PALMER

In November 2016, during the World Series event in

Fukuoka Grant Dalton, CEO of Emirates Team New Zealand,

stated over breakfast that the America’s Cup would be won

by technology.

On the surface, he was right. But the Kiwi win in Bermu-

da is about more than technology. It is about team building,

choosing the right people and above all about the leader-

ship of the team, and the spirit, the ‘zeitgeist’, they create.

Emirates Team New Zealand turned up in Bermuda in

mid-April with a boat that had never been raced, and a se-

ries of innovations that had never been tested in competi-

tion.

What did they do so dierently?

They took the hydraulic control systems to new levels of so-

phistication. The Kiwi boat was the only one without a main

sheet. Wing trimmer, Glenn Ashby sat in his pod tapping on

a little controller. The twist on the wing is a function of the

relative positions of the three flaps that form the rear por-

tion of the solid sail. Ashby never stopped playing with the

twist, just as you and I do when racing a soft sailed boat.

Similarly, Blair Tuke was able to use his legs for grinding

and control the foils with his hands. On all other boats, the

foils were the helmsman’s responsibility. The result was that

Peter Burling could concentrate on sailing fast, and getting

the tactics right.

Crucially, they got their foil and rudder designs right.

From the day we all first saw New Zealand’s light weather

foils – great long tips, with a sharp kink in the middle – it

was clear that they had gone for an extreme idea. They

had rightly predicted a light air regatta. Those big foils got

them out of the water earlier and kept them there longer.

They were also versatile – seemingly working in up to

14-knot wind speeds. Less obviously, their rudder designs

were also extreme, with a longer ‘T’ at the bottom of the

foil. Oracle tried to copy this in the five-day gap between

Cup racing weekends. So too did Ben Ainslie in his struggle

to catch up. The rudders play a big part in keeping the boat

stable, especially through manoeuvres.

The Kiwis’ tacks and gybes were quicker and more

reliable. That was down to hours of fine-tuning the control

systems, days and weeks of training. Burling’s overtake

of Spithill on the first downwind leg of the final race fol-

lowed a ‘no look’ gybe - a classic match race move with

no pre-manoeuvre set-up - then rapid acceleration giving

an unsuspecting Oracle maximum dirty air. “That’s the first

time we’ve ever done that in a race,” Burling said later. “All

the training paid o›.”

They also physically sailed their boat di›erently. They

had more windward heel, moving the centre of e›ort and

improving eœciency. It is the multihull equivalent of hiking

harder.

The cyclors generated more hydraulic power than the

arm-grinders. This meant that Ashby could trim more often,

Burling could tack and gybe whenever he liked, and they

still had oil to spare.

A true team eort

Peter Burling is a star – probably the finest helmsman in the

world, and sophisticated beyond his 26 years. That is why

he got more out of his boat and his team than any other

helmsman. He never stopped learning, and paid generous

tribute to Ray Davies and Murray Jones, the two coaches.

His 7-2 win-to-loss record in the finals pre-starts against

Jimmy Spithill, a prodigious starter, speaks volumes. His dry

humour at the press conferences was also a delight.

How did the Kiwis win?

“

Peter

Burling

is a star –

probably

the finest

helms-

man in the

world

”

TYY4 Americas Cup+J-class 2.indd 21 04/12/2017 17:01