A history of Team New Zealand’s America’s Cup boats and names

Wednesday, 17 April 2024

Todd Niall has covered and attended six America’s Cup regattas starting with the 2000 defence.

The naming ceremony for Team New Zealand’s America’s Cup defence boat on Thursday underlines the length of the country’s history in the sport, being the 23rd cup-class boat built in the quest for the Auld Mug.

Of those, it will be the 14th cup class boat for Team New Zealand. Eight were built by Sir Michael Fay’s New Zealand Challenge which preceded it, and Tag Heuer was built for Chris Dickson in 1995.

Those boats reached eight America’s Cup finals, winning four of them, and six challenger finals, winning four of those - a dominance unparalleled in the cup’s modern era.

Being different has been a feature of much of that history, and in 2024, the team has already had days of sailing in its new AC75, even before the formal naming ceremony.

While the first of the five challengers who will try to block Team New Zealand’s bid to win three cups in a row, launched first, then sailed later, the defenders were the first to sail a 2024 boat.

“Given how important the psychological game is in the Cup, I wouldn't mind betting that being able to demonstrate this to the other teams was important to them,” said British commentator Matthew Sheahan.

“To me it suggests that the Kiwis are quietly confident with where they are and how to build on a technical lead that they've had since winning the Cup in 2017,” said Sheahan in his PlanetSail video.

The team’s chief technical officer Dan Bernasconi described the boat this way, in an interview with the America’s Cup website: “We've always, always tried to be aggressive. I guess there's not many people on the team who take a conservative attitude to it.”

The naming of New Zealand’s America’s Cup boats changed course in 2017, when Te Reo names began to be used, as part of the relationship with Ngāti Whātua Ōrākei.

“Aotearoa” belonged to both the 2013 AC72 catamaran which reached match point before losing to defender Oracle Team USA in San Francisco, and the AC50 which in 2017 brought the cup back to New Zealand.

For the 2021 defence in Auckland, the team’s first iteration of the AC75 was named Te Aihe, or dolphin, followed by the ultimately triumphant Te Rehutai - “where the essence of the ocean invigorates and energises strength and determination”.

Each name is suggested by a panel of cultural experts at Ngāti Whātua Ōrākei, part of a close relationship which the Iwi has developed with team boss Grant Dalton.

The panel responds to a brief sent by Dalton, and the circumstances of each campaign and boat are weighed up.

“What can we draw on in our own culture to elevate the team and the cup,” said Kingi Makoare, the general manager for environment for Ngāti Whātua.

The already-revealed Barcelona defender is just the latest of 22 boats which have been built as part of New Zealand continuous presence near the top of the regatta since Fremantle 1986.

For that debut Cup campaign, led by merchant banker Fay, three boats were built, controversially in fibreglass, known popularly by their sail numbers as the KZ3, 5 and 7.

The Chris Dickson skippered KZ7 lost only one race before being knocked out of the Louis Vuitton Cup challenger series by cup legend Dennis Conner.

The most outrageous New Zealand-built boat soon followed, with Fay building 27-metre long KZ1 in a one-on-one challenge to Conner, who after a lengthy court battle turned up in a catamaran and trounced the monster monohull 2-0.

Fay’s New Zealand Challenge built an unprecedented four boats for the 1992 regatta in San Diego, with NZL20 in the hands of Russell Coutts and Brad Butterworth one win short of clinching the Louis Vuitton Cup, when the boat’s bowsprit was deemed illegal after a protest by Il Moro de Venezia.

The required modification after the Italian’s protest, and the removal of one victory, turned the tide and the Paul Cayard-skippered boat beat the New Zealanders 5-3.

NZ Challenge’s manager, Sir Peter Blake, stepped up to lead Team New Zealand’s debut challenge in 1995, with NZL 32 taking over from NZL 38 beating the old foe Conner 5-0 to bring the cup to Auckland for the first time.

Design-and-build innovation returned for the second Auckland defence in 2003, but with disastrous results.

The team had tragically lost the charismatic Blake who was shot and killed on a sailing expedition in Brazil, and the core sailing team led by Coutts and Butterworth joined new Swiss challenger Alinghi.

NZL 82 succeeded NZL 81 in the defence campaign, and sported a radical hull appendage (HULA) which was effectively a second hull layer near the stern the boosted waterflow and hopefully speed. There was also a much larger and heavier keel bulb.

A rash of rigging failures in the opening race coincided with NZL82 taking on water - and weight - which an infamous blue bucket was inadequate to shift.

A broken mast in race four, and another rigging breakage in the final race, saw the fragile NZL82 lose the cup 5-0 to the Swiss.

The arrival of round-the-world campaigner Dalton at the helm re-invigorated Team New Zealand, with its new naming-rights sponsor Emirates, for a “comeback challenge” in 2007 in Valencia.

NZL 84 was followed by NZL92 which won its way comfortably through the challenger series, but lost the cup 5-2 to Alinghi, with the final racing going to the Swiss by just one second, after Dean Barker’s crew had to carry out a penalty turn.

The 2010 Cup was a bitter one-on-one challenge from Larry Ellison’s BMW Oracle that ground through the courts before a 1988-style on-water mismatch which saw the American’s trimaran trounce Alinghi’s catamaran.

The biggest boats in New Zealand’s lengthy cup history were the AC72 catamarans prescribed by Ellison’s organisation for the 2013 regatta in San Francisco.

Team New Zealand built a trial boat, and then almost pulled off one of the biggest design coup’s in cup history, by equipping “Aotearoa” with foils - an innovation snapped by a photographer, just in time for Oracle Team USA to do the same with its race boat.

Aotearoa swept into the cup final pulling out at 8-1 lead over the American defender, just one short of cup victory.

In one of sports greatest comebacks Jimmy Spithill’s crew won eight straight races, to deny Aotearoa 9-8.

The second “Aoteaora” the 2017 AC50 catamaran, surprised the cup world by using “cyclors” or pedal power to drive the hydraulics for the Bermuda challenge.

It was part of a package which saw Team New Zealand win 8-1 on the water, but 7-1 in the history books, due to a rule peculiarity which saw it start minus one point in the final.

For 2021, Te Aihe and Te Rehutai led the most dramatic design change in Cup history, the AC75 foiling monohull, a concept led by Team New Zealand in conjunction with challengers.

Te Rehutai beat Italy’s Luna Rossa 7-3 in home waters in Auckland, and went on to test new ideas for the 2024 defence in Barcelona, prior to the introduction of the boat to be named in Auckland on Thursday.