With just a few months to go until competition, the stunning trophy for the inaugural Puig Women’s America’s Cup, was revealed by Puig at the Fundació Joan Miró.
The Spanish architect and designer Patricia Urquiola was commissioned to design and shape the trophy that the winning team of the Puig Women’s America’s Cup will receive on 13 October. For this, Urquiola has used “a simple, geometric figure, like a cylinder, without decorative elements or a base, which at one point opens up like a large sail struck by the wind”.
Made of silver, with a height of 58cm and weighing about 5kg, its interior hides a rose gold effect. The finishing has been done by means of an exhaustive chiseling in the widest part of the cylinder.
Unlike the original America’s Cup trophy – designed by Edmund Cotterill and crafted by Robert Garrard in 1848 – the Puig Women’s America’s Cup lacks handles so that “the winning team can embrace it in its full form”, according to the designer.
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The Orient Express Racing Team base at the western end of Port Vell became an operational sailing base on 22 August with the maiden sail of their beautiful new AC40, replete with its eye-catching blue and gold livery to match the sailing talent on board.
The anniversary of the first running of what would become the America’s Cup back in 1851 was a fitting day to launch, as a new page of history was written.
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orientexpressracingteam
Piloted by Glenn Ashby,
Horonuku has begun its New Zealand based testing phase at the RNZAF base at Whenuapai in West Auckland.
Horonuku is now in the process of undertaking a series of structural and systems tests over the next few weeks.
“It is our job over the next month or so, to get as much useful testing as we possibly can done here in Auckland, before we put
Horonuku on a ship to Lake Gairdner to continue testing and tuning on the salt lake so we are ready to roll when a weather window comes along,” said Ashby.
“We hope that today’s blessing and naming of
Horonuku with Ngāti Whātua Ōrākei, the team and supporters of the land speed project will help us to align those stars for our eventual record attempt.”
The design of
Horonuku is for out and out speed, the target is the World Wind powered Land speed record currently held by Britain’s Richard Jenkins, whose
Greenbird land yacht hit 202.9 km/h in 2009.
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Emirates Team New Zealand continue the successful commissioning and testing of their hydrogen powered foiling chase boat
Chase Zero on Auckland’s Hauraki Gulf, since its launch five weeks ago.
The top speed of
Chase Zero to date has been clocked at 50.3 knots on its ninth day of testing, which has always been the expectation of the design of the foiling boat.
Further, the range test provided engineers with valuable data and now the team can accurately assume that the range of
Chase Zero on four full 8.4 kg tanks of hydrogen gas is 330 km’s at a cruising speed of 28 to 30 knots of boat speed.
“Our hydrogen powered chase boat is cutting edge technology, so like we do with our race yachts we have been cautiously stepping it through the commissioning process,” says
Chase Zero Operations Coordinator Nick Burridge.
“But in saying that, we have progressed through it quite nicely and really ticked off some key milestones, some of which have really exceeded our expectations.”
The team have now run
Chase Zero for 36 hours of motoring so far and over 1042 km have been covered on the water, with the only emissions of its operations being pure water.
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Emirates Team New Zealand and the Royal New Zealand Yacht Squadron have announced Barcelona, in the region of Catalonia, as the host venue for the 37th America’s Cup.
Barcelona is a leading city in terms of sustainability and social impact, with ambitions to become Europe’s digital and tech capital, so the alignment with the America’s Cup is clear.
AC37 will be held in September and October of 2024.
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The
McConaghy Boats production facility has been working 24/7 carving out the tooling for the hull of the new AC40 class.
The AC40 hull shape is based on
Emirates Team New Zealand’s AC75 ‘Te Rehutai’, but is already a generational step forward incorporating a number of developments learned after the completion of AC36 last year.
In usual America’s Cup fashion, the AC40 design and production timeline has been highly condensed yet achievable due to a global collaboration led by Emirates Team New Zealand design team with Dan Bernasconi and Richard Meacham central to the management of the production process with Mark Evans Group Managing Director of McConaghy Boats.
“While the genesis of the AC40 project comes from the familiar design and innovation of the people within the Emirates Team New Zealand design department we have really had to push the limits by utilising a combination of the best of the New Zealand Marine industry as well as key offshore partnerships,” said Meacham.
“Specialised elements like the rigs are being built by
Southern Spars and the boat building talent we have at the ETNZ build facility are producing the foil arms. We also have a great partnership utilising the production power of an organisation like McConaghy Boats in China for the hulls, decks and fit out as well as
North Sails Marine group with the aero package.
“Currently there are already eight AC40s under order with McConaghy’s, with teams lined up awaiting possession. We have a world leading marine sector here in New Zealand, but like so many industries there are labour resource constraints, so without partnering with McConaghy’s and utilising their production capabilities we simply would not be able to fulfill the orders in time.”
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