It's gone from bad to worse for Emirates Team New Zealand in Bermuda.
A day after damaging a rudder, the New Zealand boat has been hit by the Land Rover BAR team and suffered damage to the back of their catamaran that could keep them off the water.
The incident happened in pre-start maneuvers during the final period of practice racing before the America's Cup regatta gets underway on May 27 (NZ time).
"Just unnecessary a week out from the America’s Cup," said ETNZ helmsman Peter Burling.
"We are all here to learn and it’s a shame we have a pretty big metre dent now in the back of our nice boat.”
Sailing commentator Peter Lester was watching the practice racing on the Great Sound and told Newshub the Kiwis had the Brits under pressure.
"It looked to me as though Peter Burling had done a damn good job of controlling the pre-start" said Lester.
"The bow of Ben Ainslie's boat went between the two hulls of the New Zealand boat. One of the crew of BAR fell in the water."
"I give Ainslie the benefit of the doubt that he just made a mistake. But Ben Ainslie's under a hell of a lot of pressure given that BAR look like they've been a bit off the pace."
BAR suffered damage to a bow but the New Zealand boat took the brunt of the collision.
“It went straight in under the media pod with his windward bow and right down the inside of the leeward hull so there is a pretty good dent there," said Burling.
"You can definitely see if has punctured right into the cockpit right around where my steering wheel is.”
The incident cut short what had been a good day for the Kiwis, with two earlier wins over BAR.
“We got the boat around the track really well, in really nice yachting conditions, but very unfortunate to get a hole in the boat on a practice race" said Skipper Glenn Ashby.
"I dont think Ben will be feeling too happy about it at the moment."
With so little time until the racing gets underway for real, the timing couldn't be worse.
"I feel for the shore crew" said Lester.
"They already had a lot of work on with the broken rudder and repairs being done but now they've got this added distraction that I'm sure will keep them off the water for a couple of days or so, which of course means the sailing team are not out on the water.
"All the teams had breakages. Team New Zealand unfortunately because they got hit by BAR, their down time is going to be the greatest but Oracle had issues today.
"For me, reliability is certainly going to be a real talking point through this America's Cup."
Newshub.
