America's Cup- Dean Barker's Blog - Back on the water
by Dean Barker on 2 Sep 2013
Emirates Team New Zealand’s AC72, NZL5 runs race drills with Luna Rossa in their build up to meet Oracle Racing in the America’s Cup. Chris Cameron/ETNZ
http://www.chriscameron.co.nz
Writing on his blog at Kiwi Yachting Consultants' websites, of which he is a substantial shareholder and director, Emirates Team NZ's skipper Dean Barker gives his view looking ahead to the 34th America's Cup
After the last three days off we got back on SF Bay today to begin our final preparations for the Americas Cup. The shore crew once again have done an amazing job of getting through an incredibly long job list including the addition of a couple of new areodynamic fairings. These changes will all hopefully increase the performance of our boat around the course, and although small on their own, can cumulate into a decent sized gain with enough of them.
Today we also had the benefit of some good race practice with Luna Rossa. It is an amazing gesture that they are prepared to come out and train with us less than a week since the LV final was raced and we are very thankful for that. We are able to set up a number of race scenarios which will hopefully improve our comms on board the yacht and also better prepare us for what I am sure could be a very close battle.
We have another day on the water tomorrow with LR which will be great and hopefully we will continue to get some much needed race practice.
All for now
Dean
To see more of Dean Barker's blogs go to www.kiwiyachting.co.nz
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