The Royal Gazette. By Talbot Wilson.
Emirates Team New Zealand sailed their America’s Cup Class race boat on the Great Sound for the first time over the weekend — and yesterday the Kiwis’ boat showed no ill effects from having a rudder missing when it was hauled out of the water on Saturday evening.
The boat, New Zealand Aotearoa, arrived in Bermuda on March 10 and was reassembled in just 12 days.
When New Zealand Aotearoa was being hauled out after the Saturday session, spectators noticed that the port side rudder was missing.
Crew members had been in the back of each hull working on something down inside where the rudders are installed.
A diver went in the water, apparently to find the missing port side rudder in the slip under where the boat had been, but the rope he took down to haul it up to the chase boat came up empty on the first try.
Team New Zealand have not commented on the incident, but they must have successfully found the rudder in the 40-foot deep basin and yesterday had two rudders installed when they launched. Of Saturday’s sail, Team New Zealand said: “The evening sail was more about a recommissioning of the systems and components to make sure everything was working properly before getting back into the mindset of pushing the development hard, day after day.”
Read the full story, including quotes from Grant Dalton and Glenn Ashby, here.
