Emirates Team New Zealand is deep in a demanding phase of its America's Cup campaign, balancing intense on-water competition with equally intense technical development across two very different boats on opposite sides of the world.
In recent weeks, the team travelled to Cagliari, Sardinia, for the first America's Cup Preliminary Regatta, competing in AC40s before returning to Auckland to begin a concentrated block of AC75 testing. Alongside that on-water programme, the design team has been pressing toward the deadlines that will lock in the final configuration of Taihoro ahead of the defence in Naples next year.
PR1 in Sardinia delivered the first competitive racing of this Cup cycle, a moment welcomed across the broader America's Cup community. Coach Ray Davies reflected on what the event offered beyond the results themselves. "It wasn't quite the result we wanted, but thinking of the bigger picture, we got so much out of it. The AC40s are really exciting boats to sail, and the Preliminary Regatta really helped to remind the team on and off the water of what is coming in Naples next year. The competition on the water, the hype, and the crowds off the water, but at the end of the day it's a yacht race. So the sailors, and the whole team for that matter, have to be able to perform under pressure in front of a big stage, ride the ups and downs, and keep getting better."
The team switched from AC40 racing to AC75 testing within a matter of days. Davies described the contrast: "Then to flick the switch not much more than a few days later and get out on a cold winter's day in Auckland on the AC75, which is a completely different beast. There is so much going on with mechatronics, hydraulics, and electronics bringing all of that together. So the development of the AC75 is pretty exciting. That's the really cool thing about the America's Cup: you have the out-and-out racing, but then the fascinating technical development of the big boats and the design contest that it also is."
Now into her fourth campaign with the team, performance engineer Elise Beavis plays a central role in extracting every available gain from both classes, working through the data to find improvements wherever they exist.
"The campaign so far has been pretty exciting, mixing between AC40 and AC75 sailing," Beavis explained. "The AC40 is cool in that all the differences come down to how the sailors are sailing the boat, being one-design identical boats. Obviously, we had two boats and two crews in Cagliari, so for me, picking up the differences between our two crews of sailors and looking at what the combinations are doing with aspects of how they are sailing and going fast to then suggest that to the others is a rewarding challenge."
She continued: "And then when we , it is a completely different game making the AC75 as fast as possible and exploring all corners of the class rule and design parameters for performance gains. But there's still a lot of space to explore as we narrow down where we're going and how to do the best with that equipment."
With hull geometry frozen under the class rules, the question of where the biggest performance steps will come from keeps returning to two particular areas. Beavis was direct about what she sees as the most significant gains available. "The boats got a bit lighter from last time round, so there's inherently another step forward in performance. But the big one is that sometime between now and the racing next year, we will be getting new foils and they'll be different," she said. "So with that, and an understanding of how to sail the boat a little bit differently with those foils, we need to spend a lot of time in the simulator looking at different foil concepts and trade-offs between the multiples of different design options and decisions."
Foils aside, the move from cyclor power to battery power has opened up a substantial area of engineering work focused on the systems inside the boat, components that rival teams and outside observers have considerably less visibility into. Mechanical engineer Tim Meldrum is among the Emirates Team New Zealand engineers responsible for developing the intricate systems running throughout Taihoro.
"Inside the boat, we could essentially completely gut all of the systems out of there and rebuild everything from scratch, including all the hydraulics, electronics, and control systems. So, it's over to us with what we want to do there: Whether we think we had a really good system to begin with, or whether we just want a clean-slate rebuild. So, we've looked pretty hard at what we had and what we want to do now. So it's keeping us busy," Meldrum explained.
The second Preliminary Regatta is confirmed for Naples from 24 to 27 September 2026, and the team will maintain its dual-track programme across Auckland and Naples in the coming months, continuing development work on both the AC40 and Taihoro.
Davies put it plainly: "There is a lot to play out in this America's Cup. It's not going to be straightforward bringing it all together, but Naples next year is going to be really exciting."
