Emirates Team New Zealand is back in the water at its home base in Auckland after a successful 2004 European campaign. Having won this year’s Louis Vuitton season trophy for the pre-regattas held in Marseille and Valencia earlier this year, the team has re-grouped and is ready for an intense training period in the waters of New Zealand’s Hauraki Gulf ahead of next year’s races which start in June back in Valencia.

Emirates Team New Zealand will take full advantage of the summer in New Zealand to test its new boat, NZL68. For 2005 there will be a new version of the America’s Cup racing yachts - known as version five. ETNZ has already built and fitted out its new version five boat and took it out o­n to the water for the first time recently - making the team o­ne of the first America’s Cup syndicates sailing in the new version of the design rule.

The main changes now allowed to the boats are a deeper keel and lighter bulb, a larger sail area - thanks to a longer spinnaker pole - and inflatable battens. Hull appendages, or hulas, are banned. As a result, the version five boats should prove lighter and faster - and thus make for some even more dramatic and exciting racing in Europe next summer.

It’s been o­nly six months since the team announced its challenge for the 2007 America’s Cup, and in that time Emirates Team New Zealand has experienced some dramatic highs and lows. The destruction of the team’s boat o­n shore, during a freak storm in Marseilles, was followed by an all-out scramble to organise a replacement boat for the Valencia races and then, ultimately, overall victory in the 2004 pre-regattas.

The efforts to overcome the challenge and produce credible results tested the entire team and helped in cementing the bond among its members. The nearly 100-strong team is now approaching the 2005 racing season with confidence and belief in itself and its ability to conquer any new challenges.

With summer in the southern hemisphere about to start, the team members are looking forward to several months of rigorous training of both crew and equipment in Auckland. Everybody is now based in o­ne place for the first time and the hard work of preparing for the European summer regattas of 2005 can start in earnest, to lay the ground for the long and arduous campaign leading up to the America’s Cup finale in 2007.

EMIRATES TEAM NEW ZEALAND’S MANAGING DIRECTOR IN DUBAI FOR REVIEW OF TEAM’S 2005 PLANS [Yachting Universe]

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This entry was posted on Thursday, January 6th, 2005 at 9:19 pm and is filed under Emirates Team New Zealand. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.