Bad day gets worse for Cup holders 'Team New Zealand'

Bad day gets worse for Cup holders 'Team New Zealand'

Paul Tait, Reuters, Auckland, New Zealand

The first day of holder Team New Zealand's America's Cup defense
against Swiss challenger Alinghi began badly and got steadily
worse as their hi-tech boat suffered a series of breakages on
Saturday.

Team New Zealand handed Alinghi a 1-0 lead when they pulled
out on the opening leg of the first race of the best-of-nine
series on the Hauraki Gulf off Auckland with a broken boom, torn
sails and calf-deep water washing around the aft deck.

Syndicate head Tom Schnackenberg estimated up to six tones of
water washed into the boat, forcing it lower in the water and
causing a chain reaction of gear breakages.

"We've got engineers working on it right now," Schnackenberg
told reporters. "We think we'll be fine but we're not taking it
lightly."

The mishaps robbed thousands of eager New Zealand fans of the
chance to see whether the Cup holder's radical new hull design,
which features an appendage designed to increase overall
waterline length and reduce drag, had a significant speed
advantage over Ernesto Bertarelli's Alinghi.

Skipper Dean Barker said his black NZL-82 boat suffered a
problem with its foresail before the start of the race and it
quickly began taking on water in steep seas whipped up by winds
of up to 25 knots and thousands of spectator craft.

"It was a bit of a shock to us to have the leeward side of the
boat pretty much full of water after only about eight or nine
minutes of sailing," Barker told a news conference.

"It just went from bad to worse. It wasn't ideal, it was
definitely hurting us at the end," he said.

Team New Zealand's boat was towed ignominiously back to the
syndicate's base, the crew sitting in silence with heads bowed.

The crew earlier bailed out calf-deep water using a blue
bucket normally used as a toilet but the extra weight led to a
series of gear breakages, including a broken boom.

"It certainly felt like it was a losing battle there for a
while," Team New Zealand mid-bowman Matthew Mitchell said.
"We were quite fortunate the bucket was there at all."

The boat's mainsail also tore and the headsail blew out
spectacularly, forcing the Cup holders to pull out of the race
after 25 minutes as Alinghi safely sailed around the course to
take a 1-0 lead.

"Typically when something does go wrong...it does load up
other parts of the boat," said Barker. "It's pretty disappointing
when that happens."

Barker said his crew had never seen so much water come into
their boat during their long months of training.