journeyed in the aftermath of last year’s victory in the America’s Cup. After the parades and the excitement of bringing the Cup back to New Zealand Ashby packed up his trusty Toyota Land Cruiser, hitched the caravan behind complete with an array of dirt bikes, bicycles, an inflatable dinghy, windsurfers and sundry diversions and headed off on a 17,000km trek into Australia’s rugged hinter- land, traversing the middle of the great continent from south to north and then looping back down the equally remote west coast. ‘It was a time of decompression, reflection and clearing the mind
– definitely one of the best things I have ever done,’ says Ashby as he steps outside the Emirates Team New Zealand design room, its hushed atmosphere conveying the intense concentration of expert brains focused on developing the battle machines for the 2021 Cup defence in Auckland. ‘Since that trip I have been commuting back and forth to Auckland
for two or three days every few weeks to keep in touch with what is going on around the design effort,’ he says. ‘I have been trying to keep away from all the politics, which are not my forte, but I think the decisions that have been taken around the bases and so on are going to be fantastic. On the water I think Auckland is going to be absolutely outstanding for the type of sailing and testing we are going to be doing and ultimately as a venue for racing.’ Like Ashby’s own escape into the Australian outback, the rest
of the sailing team had also dispersed, initially to reflect and unwind after the intensity of the Bermuda campaign. ‘It was a real pressure cooker. Everybody needed time away to let the dust settle. After that, when you come back into the team environment and start rebuilding, you look at everything through a clean set of lenses.’ Accordingly, for much of this year the sailing team will be
scattered, largely free to pursue their own interests but encouraged to keep their skills focused on high-performance sailing. Peter Burling and Blair Tuke are offshore on the Volvo Ocean
over 45kt. After 72 hours of criss-crossing the Mediterranean, Sodebo was finally first to finish, less than an hour in front. After sterling work in 2016 and 2017 – solo round-the-world
record (since broken by François Gabart), North Atlantic record, victory in the Transat Jacques Vabre, Sailor of the Year – Thomas Coville is clearly still on a roll, winning the Nice UltiMed with panache. He achieved this with an eclectic but complementary crew that included his always cheerful solo routeur Jean-Luc Nélias. Francis was racing with most of his Jules Verne-winning crew including two- time solo round-the-world winner Bernard Stamm. With this latest victory Coville has proved that he will be a force
to be reckoned with for the Route du Rhum this November. ‘The battle against Idecwas simply magnificent,’ he gushed on his arrival in Nice. ‘Racing with daggers drawn, our rival was not just anyone: it was the boat that has won both the Jules Verne Trophy and the Route du Rhum twice and she was sailed by a top-flight crew. By winning this duel my crew and I have achieved something wonderful.’ Francis: ‘We weren’t bored for a second in a very dynamic race.
We were in contact the whole time, one minute ahead of Sodebo, the next behind them. The conditions were always changing. ‘The Mediterranean always has surprises in store! We were lead-
ing at Cap Corse but on our way back towards Nice we got pinned under a big windless cloud. Just a few miles away Sodebo found a little favourable breeze and powered by. After that it was over.’ Thomas is also working hard of course on a new Ultim, designed
by Renaud Bañuls, which they did a good job of keeping secret until quite recently! His current ‘old’ Sodebo will surely be a nice way to enter the Brest solo round-the-world race in 2019? Patrice Carpentier
NEW ZEALAND For a professional sailor the vast Red Centre of Australia is about as remote from the customary sporting arena as it is possible to get. Yet it is to this arid isolation that Glenn Ashby and his family
Race with decisions still to be made about defending their Olympic 49er title; Josh Junior and Andy Maloney are working towards Olympic selection in the Finn class, others are campaigning in Moths and on big boats, while Ashby has been winning the Ben Lexcen Trophy for taking out the inaugural Superfoiler series in Australia with his star-studded crewmates Nathan Outteridge and Iain Jensen. ‘The core ETNZ sailing group have got together a few times so
far and between events the sailors come back and spend time here meeting the designers and engineers. Pete and Blair are keeping in touch by email while they do the Volvo but they have also been back in New Zealand a few times during the race. From the base Richard Meacham has been doing a fantastic job liaising with the sailing group and keeping everybody in the loop on the design issues, so we don’t feel we are really away from it all that much. Somebody from the sailing team is always well connected.’ As a team ETNZ will not be doing any sailing, at least until next
year. Unlike the other Cup contenders for 2021, ETNZ will not be honing their skills on the TP52 circuit. Apart from the expense of a TP52 campaign, Ashby says the sailing team in Bermuda repre- sented a diverse range of skills from big boats to small, high- performance skiffs, catamarans and foiling Moths. He believes that is a formula for success going forward into the new class as well. ‘You bring all those disciplines together on any boat and you can
feed off each other. We believe that the high-performance foiling aspect is the key to moving forward. Sure, you can develop communication systems and crew co-ordination on TP52s, but we feel we are going to have plenty of time working together on the new Cup boats once they are launched. ‘The biggest thing for me is to stay fresh and current with your
design thinking by sailing high-performance boats, because foiling is going to be a major part of it. The three-person trapeze Superfoilers in Australia are about the most relevant boat in the world to be sailing right now. There are many similarities, particularly the way the righting moment comes on. I often find myself thinking this is what it is going to be like when we move onto the big boats. ‘The thing about sailing high-performance boats of this type is
that the learning moves forward in quantum jumps,’ he argues, ‘whereas with boats like the TP52, excellent as they are, it is much more about subtle refinement.’ With a huge workload ahead to finalise the systems and design
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