Team New Zealand have unveiled their second boat, which they will race in the America's Cup in San Francisco.
But they don't want to give away all their secrets, with restrictions placed on what 3 News’ camera was allowed to shoot.
“We're happy with boat one, this boat is similar but it's changed in many ways to the first boat,” says team chief executive Grant Dalton.
But they're not giving away what changes they've actually made, and that's largely to do with who else is watching.
“Some shots were taken as we brought it across the Harbour Bridge, even though it was for protection wrapped in shrink wrap - already the websites are analysing the boat and they're pretty accurate,” says Dalton.
When Team New Zealand were testing the first boat, observers from America’s Cup holders Oracle were never far away, although they've also been doing a little spying of their own.
“Certainly when Oracle first launched their boat and Artemis launched theirs we saw things that we thought were really smart and in one form or the other they're incorporated here.”
And as fun as it looked at times, they got a lot out of their time on Auckland's Hauraki Gulf.
“One of the things we learnt is that the gains from being able to push the boat really hard are big,” says technical director Nick Holroyd.
But there's not a lot of time to test the new AC-45.
Under America’s Cup rules they're only allowed to build two boats, and they're not allowed to start sailing this one until the start of next month.
“We can’t launch until the first of February, so I think we'll be really close to that date. We won’t quite make it because I think it's a Friday actually, we'll probably go in on that following week, maybe Monday the fourth will be the time when we get the boat in the water and [start] sailing during that week,” says Dalton.
The team hopes this boat will be the one to help them win the cup back, though they'll get a better idea of that when the challenger series gets underway in July.
3 News
source: newshub archive
