America's Cup Recon Diary: March 30 - ETNZ starts in top end day
by Richard Gladwell, Sail-World NZ 31 Mar 01:27 PDT
28 March 2026
Emirates Team New Zealand in a hard turn - AC75, Day 8 - March 30, 2026 © Richard Gladwell / Sail-World.com/nz
With daylight saving due to end this Sunday in New Zealand, Emirates Team NZ put in another long day - getting the most from the long summer days.
The Kiwis checked out at 1100hrs, and headed straight for the Back Paddock, more commonly known as Course E for the 2021 America's Cup.
A fresh offshore breeze was averaging 15-20kts, gusting 23kts, with the occasional rain squall moving across the outer Waitemata Harbour.
As the afternoon wore on, the wind followed the usual pattern - increasing in strength in squalls and easing back in between. Fortunately, the frequency of the squalls accompanied by light rain diminished over the afternoon.
From what we could see through high-powered binoculars, the America's Cup Defenders conducted a series of windward-leeward and runs across the breeze to conduct high-speed testing. Most of the time, they were in sheltered water behind the sandspit that extends out from Browns Island, while still getting a steady breeze.
No nosedives or similar snafus were seen. It would seem that the boat is on autopilot. No crew list was available at the time of publication. Regular sailing squad member, Blair Tuke, is involved in the Jono Ridler Swim4The Ocean and was off Cape Palliser, 35-40nm from the finish point of Ridler's swim, the length of the eastern coastline of the North Island. The remarkable swim is backed by LiveOcean, of which Tuke and Luna Rossa's Peter Burling are co-founders.
We got a closer look at the AC75 at the end of the session when they came around the bottom of Browns Island and conveniently headed for our observation point on North Head.
The rooster tail off the rudder in the image at the top of the story shot was not typical, but it fired up when the NZ AC75 did what appeared to be a deliberate high-speed turn. They didn't appear to lose any control in the manoeuvre despite the rudder appearing to wash out.
The team dropped the sails around 1700hrs, as another squall was about to hit.
ETNZ Training Report - Four Seasons and three wind ranges in one day.
ETNZ training session in changing conditions had them changing gears constantly, often manoeuvring and prestarting in squally conditions and at times out of range on their sail selections. The prestart focus was confident and aggressive, showcasing tight manoeuvres only with one board in situations where we would normally expect to see a more conservative 2 boards down. As the breeze built into the team found a new mode with their M3 which had the top 1/3rd of the sail flattened to a low drag blade and the leech tension kept tight as you might normally expect to see on Jake Pye's Moth.
Key points:
- Tight Circles
- Loose moments when killing Time on Distance
- Foil tip piercing speed builds
- Mainsail control range
At 9:20 am the boat Rolled out of the shed and lifted the #3 mast in.
During the dock tune considerable time was spent working on the cunningham system
The team towed to Rangitoto Island and hoisted sails, M3-0 and J4-2 Sailing downwind towards the "Back Paddock" in a SW breeze of 10-14knots. The team used the whole area from Browns island to the bottom end of Rangitoto for long warm up legs. The pitch trim was conservative at slightly bow up and the manoeuvres were kept flat and simple as was the heel angle flatter while sailing straight line. The breeze built to 12-16knts and the boat looked over powered and the mainsail was quite twisted to release unwanted power. The team stopped at 11:31 to hoist the J5-1 and continue sailing.
Sailing angles downwind were aprox 032 to 105 deg
The “Roll gybe”, late board was re introduced.
Angles upwind were aprox 210 - 300 deg
The team continued to make full use of the area with big warm up runs, the pitch looked a bit shaky out of the tacks with a bow up through the manoeuvre, bow down after the exit and then up again before settling in to stable flight.
12:24 pm the breeze eased to 8-12knts, the mainsail still maintained a mid range twist setup and some pre roll into the tacks was introduced. The breeze dropped further to 6-10knts and the team changed back to the J4-2.
The team warmed up and then went into prestart practice. Kicking off with a reverse circle, a deep dive and lead back 35sec rolling into a split start onto port.
A feature move was the Mainsail quite pinned in through the dial down gybe. Keeping the main sheeted in through a lot of the manoeuvres and steering through circles and turn ups.
One board pinned mainsail reverse circle looks good. Practiced this move twice at aprox 1:10pm
This technique looked noticeably quicker and tighter than the common 2 boards down eased sheets manoeuvre.
1:14 stopped for a Battery swap before more prestart practice. Stopping next at 1:55 to change Iain Jensen off for Jake Pye. A very long warm up and back into some prestarts saw the breeze building in front of another rain squall making the team early for the line, trying to kill speed and power on the final approach.
This was now what would previously be top-end of wind range for the J4. Sailing in this breeze (aprox 15-18knts) the mainsail was super flat in the top 3rd which allowed for a tighter leech profile. The tips of the foils were often a long way out of the water while sailing upwind, noticeably out of manoeuvres when the hull was slightly heeled to windward for the speed build. The tip of the foil and ride height of the hull was a step lower to the water with less tip piercing on the foil when locked into their upwind mode.
There were a couple of loose prestarts and a sit down speed kill in one final approach. Keeping main quite trimmed in thru power zones in turns and predominantly one board down sailing in the prestart manoeuvres with high confidence.
4:18 pm the team took a long break while the shore team was onboard with FCS toolkits.
Restarting the sail back to upwind to finish the session. On the upwind sail home the head of the mainsail looked considerably flatter, straighter and more locked in.
4:37pm Stopped sailing off North Head