During the 12 months since they staved off Italian rivals Luna Ross Prada Pirelli to retain the America's Cup off Auckland, Emirates Team New Zealand haven't exactly been idle.
Publicly, they have battled to set terms - and a venue - for their next trophy defence in 2024, controversially playing big-money overseas opportunities against a less lucrative offers on home waters.
Behind closed doors, they've been working on a new project that may, amost counter-intuitively, make their boats faster - a new wind-driven land speed world record.
The possibility has become an obsession for Aussie Glenn Ashby, who has won 17 world championships over a variety of classes on the water and become in integral part of Team NZ success over the past decade.
Ashby and Team NZ chief executive Grant Dalton have often considered turning their team's design and engineering expertise towards other goals, and only need look at how Cup rivals Ineos Britannia and Alinghi can draw on lessons learnt in Formula One motor-racing, through Mercedes and Red Bull Racing respectively.
"The wind powered land speed record is something I have always been interested in," says Dalton. "When bringing a design challenge like this into ETNZ, I knew it would be beneficial on a number of fronts to keep the technicians and the innovators of the organisation engaged during a down time with new, complex technical issues to solve with a cool project."
Ashby has had to play his part from afar, based across the Tasman during the COVID-19 pandemic.
"I have never spent so much time on the computer as I have this past year,” he says. "Basically, from the point that Dalts said, 'Let’s look at it' after the finish of AC36, we have been all go.
"First job was a two-week in-depth feasibility study to ensure enough of a global understanding that this was something that could be done in a positive way for ETNZ, and would not impact the team and its America's Cup objectives financially or resource-wise."
The current record is by British engineer Richard Jenkins, who powered his craft Greenbird to 202.9kph across California's Mojave Desert in 2009. Jenkins later used that technology to create unmanned 'saildrones' that circumnavigated Antarctica in 2019.
"As a team, we explored some pretty creative and innovative conceptual ideas in the quest for more speed," says Ashby. "However, in the end, our design and performance principles evolved into a concept reasonably similar in basic layout to the existing recordholder, which really emphasised to us what a huge challenge this will be.
"Like the America's Cup, we just need to be doing it better across the board by utilising our experience, skills and tools gained as a team to date.
"Then, like sailing, there are always the weather gods and doing everything we can to be ready when the right conditions are presented at the location."
The challenge presents some notable design differences to sailing boats fast on water. Wheel or tyre technology plays a crucial role on land, but none on water.
Aerodynamics in sailing are based on slight lateral movement, not straight-line speed like motor-racing, while weight is a disadvantage on sailboats, but has benefits on land.
"This project is a really compelling one for all of us involved," says naval architect Guillaume Verdier. "There are a lot of similarities to what we do with fast sailboats in terms of the aerodynamics and structural forces, construction methods, materials etc, so we are well placed in many respects.
"But without doubt, no boat we ever design will go anywhere near as fast as we need our land yacht to go. With the increase in speed comes increased complexities, but we are sure these are complexities that we can learn from, so we can make our next AC75 go faster."
The craft is currently under construction at Team NZ's North Shore facility and scheduled for completion next month. After testing, it will be shipped across the ditch, where the record attempt will take place in July/August on one of Australia's massive salt lakes - Lake Gairdner in South Australia or Lake Lefroy in Western Australia are possible venues.
"Obviously, the objective is to design a craft that becomes the fastest wind-powered land yacht ever," says Ashby
“No-one would have ever been that fast in a wind powered craft on or off the water, so that’s a pretty bloody exciting thing to try to become."
