It was desperately hard keeping Team New Zealand going after the Oracle vs Alinghi grudge match brought almost everything else to a standstill from 2007 to 2013. It was harder still after their ‘epic defeat’ (above) in 2013, beaten 9-8 by Oracle having led the Match by 8-1. Funding vanished and wages were soon meagre or non-existent. But a brutal lesson in ‘living off the land’ bred the fiercest determination to set the record straight in Bermuda, where they executed the most cost-effective Cup-winning campaign ever seen
strategic approach. In a nutshell, to Grant Dalton it was a quick case of ‘sold’. Ironically, it seems this major step bred a
confidence and enthusiasm that were to work against them, blasting down Auck- land harbour as they did on their AC72’s first foiled-up outing in August 2012 and showing far too early that a ‘conventional’ AC72 was just not going to cut it. Yes, they were able to continue developing while the other challengers and the defender redi- rected their own programmes, but in real- ity they had gifted the world a start-up set of foil design instructions. Of course the final of the 2013 event
must still be an ongoing cause of sleepless nights for many New Zealanders, losing as they did from a sensationally commanding lead of 8-1 with just one race left to win. I have heard many varied explanations about why this defeat-out-of-the-jaws-of- victory happened but it was interesting to hear Dan’s take. Conditioned by past experience which bred a priority of relia- bility over development, he described the Kiwi challenger as really conservative in terms of construction; they had wanted, for example, deeper foils but were fearful of them breaking. Interesting also to hear that leading 8-1
‘is a super-difficult position to be in’; lose one or two and you’re still believing that one out of the next six or seven will surely come good; even losing four on the trot still delivers a reasonable margin of
40 SEAHORSE
expectation, but get to 8-6 and you’re thinking that maybe you should change something, but by then of course it’s simply too late. In summary he felt that they didn’t deliver the technical progression that their boat’s conception had heralded. The result didn’t exactly wipe out their
will to live, or for that matter their will to carry on, but in the lead-in to the next Cup cycle they became strategically as insular as their own island geography. Various things happened, including at
some point in the campaign Nick Holroyd leaving, causing Dan Bernasconi to step up to lead the technical team of what is now about 40 heads. Money was short and what budget they had was substantially invested in what they had learnt to trust – the simulation approach, and as Dan said, ‘writing software is a lot cheaper than building boats’. It meant that they weren’t craving for
learning time on the water with their AC50 foiling catamaran and were pre- pared to economise in costly Bermuda by arriving late and last, outwardly seeming unprepared and happy to play the under- dog card. For several reasons that currency didn’t last… one being their unique cyclors who delivered levels of power their competitors’ biceps couldn’t reach, and another their foil behaviour which they understood and had ‘sailed’ with innumer- able times on their simulator, indeed by then a full, sit-in simulator. They flew
through the challenger series and in turn delivered a touché result in the final, winning 7-1 against the defending Oracle. So they went home redeemed and
relieved. But still broke and somehow needing to fund another defence. But let’s pause there for a moment, and
dig into the simulator aspect that has become the hub of any AC campaign, especially New Zealand’s. Dan is rather modest about it, explaining that in some respects it’s old technology but is, I under- stand, almost the only development tool that Emirates TNZ use. He may be a Brit who brought the core
of his technology with him, but in so many ways it strikes a chord with what we have come to understand as the Kiwi spirit – pragmatic, upbeat, enthusiastic about new ideas and challenges, and if there isn’t an established solution they’ll figure one out. And the point of Dan’s team’s software is that it operates in real time, computing the physics of the foil, the rudder and the rig at a rate of 30 solutions per second – and this is where an ‘old technology’ descrip- tion comes from, using fairly basic fluid dynamic theory for reasons of simplicity and consequently speed. For the foils, Dan says, he is using the
Lifting Line method which has been around for over 100 years, and is very much there in my much worn Abbott and von Doenhoff bible that I bought in the early 1970s. It’s largely overlooked these
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