Team New Zealand technical director Dan Bernasconi is delighted with the concept of their new AC75-class boat, which they will sail the next America's Cup.
Working with Luna Rossa design teams, they spent the past four months evaluating a wide range of monohull concepts.
Bernasconi is thrilled with the confirmed concept and is just as keen to get started on development, as are everybody else involved.
"We're really, really excited and we've been working on this for four months, going through loads of different concepts," he said.
"And the point we've got to with this boat, we're all really happy with it, so excited to be showing it to the public and excited to be working with on it for the next three years.
"I've been here to meet with other teams and talk to them about it. They're really excited about the boat too and I think it takes a lot of the lessons that we've learned from the AC50s.
"For designers and engineers, we love something different, and it's more exciting to do something brand new and sort of iterating on an existing design."
While building the fastest and most practical boat is their main concern, Bernasconi revealed the designers had tried to create a concept that could have success outside the 'Auld Mug'.
"It remains to be seen, but it's certainly been our intentions in looking at options for next America's Cup to come up with a boat we think can translate to sailing outside of the Cup," he said.
"That's really what we've been wanting to do - to come up with something that could trickle down to the guys that go sailing in the weekend and go racing.
"If you are racing this boat at club level, obviously you're not going to be using a crane, so we wanted a boat and a rig type that could translate to sailing outside of the Cup."
Bernasconi hopes the boat designers are given as much opportunity as possible to implement their ideas and be true to the concept.
"Because it's a very a new class and a new concept, we've got to be careful we don't over-constrain," he said. "It's really early days and we don't know the best way to develop all the aspects of this boat are," he said.
"We want to leave enough open for designers to really push the boat as far as the concept can go, so I think that's something we've got to think hard about."
Newshub.
