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America’s Cup: Emirates Team NZ resumes in water tests after 5 weeks at Lockdown
by Richard Gladwell Sail-World NZ Apr 29 22:51 UTC
April 30, 2020
Te Kaahu under towing tests at Waitemata Port – April 30, 2020 © Richard Gladwell / Sail-World.com
Emirates Team New Zealand resumed its development and testing program this morning after being kicked out of the water on March 23 by blocking the Level 4 Alert COVID-19.
After dumping its Te Kahu test boat into the water at 8:00 a.m., the frustrated 12-meter monohull underwent a towing test to verify some new modifications that have been ready for testing since the day before the national shutdown.
Based on the test being successful, the team was expected to test the new design feature later in the day.
The government-mandated lockout has cost the team nearly six weeks of its vital development time, which is unlikely to be recovered through reorganized programming.
Grant Dalton told Sail-World by phone: “Emirates Team New Zealand is a trading company in terms of COVID Alert Level 319 and their test ship is an extension of that trading activity. We have been in communication with all appropriate parties and received a letter from MBIE that did not disagree with this position. Coincidentally, the New Zealand Association of Marine Industries announced today that they had negotiated a relaxation of the Alert 3 rules to allow sea navigation and the movement of ships.
Late last week, Emirates Team New Zealand announced that it was using personal social distancing devices developed by Dunedin’s Igtimi, who are also responsible for the development of GPS-based positioning hardware and software for use in the regatta and the boat management for the 36 America’s Cup regattas. The entire crew used the devices today, and instead of the design crew packing in two chase boats, four were in the water to allow for greater personal separation.
The loss of valuable testing time at Te Kahu was compounded by the four months wasted after his AC75 Te Aihe was shipped from Auckland to Europe to compete in two America’s Cup World Cup regattas, in Cagliari and Portsmouth. . Both regattas were canceled in mid-March. That decision came a couple of days too late for the Copa América champions who were forced to transfer in Singapore and send the AC75 to Italy.
At the end of last week, Italian challenger Luna Rossa sailed for several days, from his base in Cagliari, Sardina, after installing electric motors in his AC75, and replacing six crew to meet the Italian social distance requirements for COVID- 19.
Construction of the New Zealand team’s second AC75, and likely a racing boat at its North Shore construction facility, resumed on Tuesday as allowed by the lower Alert Level and additional safety procedures required to work under Level 3 restrictions. They are working 24 hours to recover the 9000 man-hours of construction time lost during the Level 4 blockade.
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