American Magic Skipper Terry Hutchinson confirmed that they will default this weekend’s round robin racing to be ready for the Prada Cup Semi-Finals on 29 January.
At the Skipper’s Press Conference Hutchinson said that they preferably hope to get the boat on the water some days before then for testing.
The Prada Cup event organisers will announce changes to the AC36 Challenger Selection sailing programme in the next few days.
Ed Note: See the Amendment 08 to the Protocol here . . .
Hutchinson commented “The guys have to get the boat ready, and and we have to follow a bit of a procedure to do it because the boat’s just that complex. The intention is to put the boat back to exactly how we left it yesterday.”
“It’s probably a little bit too early to suggest an exact time that we’ll be back out on the water, but we know we have a hard deadline of a week from Friday for the semi-final.”
On ETNZ’s boatbuilding help:
“From a boat building perspective, the defenders are in the strongest position to help us because we’re in their hometown. There’s a lot of people there that are available to help us out straight away.”
“They’ve put us in contact and I spoke with Grant Dalton, Richard Meachem, and others this morning, who helped us get the boat in last night. I think Dalt’s quote was, ‘Whatever you need, we have it for you.'”
On the resolve of American Magic:
“The beauty of our team is that there’s a high level of resolve, and I think what we’re going to see over the next eight to ten days is the boat get rebuilt.”
“She might not come out of the shed as pretty, but she’s going to come out of the shed and we’re going to get back into racing.”
On helmsman Dean Barker:
“Dean is a critical part of our team. He’s got a little bit of ice water in his veins, which is what the boat requires.”
“We, as a team, have the utmost confidence in him and his abilities. From my perspective, there’s nobody else we’d rather have on the wheel than him.”
“We win as a team and we lose as a team.”
On the rounding incident and the damage sustained:
“You look at the boat speed when the boat was accelerating through the trajectory of the turn, and we were going 47 knots or something. There’s transverse structure inside the boat and then there’s a longitudinal structure.”
“And when you look at the boat in slow motion, it popped quite a wheelie. The leeward foil came out of the water and we got a reasonable amount of bow-out altitude up.”
“And when the boat slammed down, it’s fine if it slams flat on its keel. But when you land on the side, on the flat panel, basically the structure inside the yacht just guillotined the panel and out it came.”
The 36th America’s Cup is living up to the 170-year reputation of the event . . . to expect the unexpected.
A turbulent back-story that started in 1851 with the crushing and unexpected victory of the New York YC yacht America over a fleet of 15 British yachts from the Royal Yacht Squadron, in a race around the Isle of Wight.
Through 34 previous challenges the battle for the ‘Auld Mug’ has attracted the world’s top sailors and yacht designers and involved wealthy entrepreneurs and sponsors in what is considered the peak of international yachting competition.
The American Magic team’s home-club, the New York YC, were the original home-club of what has become known as the America’s Cup, and successfully defended the trophy twenty-four times in a row before being defeated by the Royal Perth YC of Australia in 1983.
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