Mission accomplished at Almeria

The Emirates Team New Zealand crew has completed the Extreme 40 Sailing Series regatta at Almeria confident their mission has been accomplished.

Skipper Dean Barker said:  “When we lined up for the first start at Almeria, we had no real appreciation of what was required to race multi-hulls successfully.

“Now we do and we have a list a mile long of areas that we would need to work on before we could get to the top level – tactics, crew work, starts, mark roundings, close encounters – pretty much everything.

“The regatta has been very valuable. We had 27 races over the four days – that’s 27 starts, countless roundings and boat interactions.

“We (bowman Jeremy Lomas and grinder Winston Macfarlane) have a much better understanding of what’s required to get to the level necessary ... and we are confident that if we concentrated on acquiring these skills they would come very quickly.”

For the time being the team is back to the much more familiar Louis Vuitton Trophy mode, with the Dubai regatta starting mid-November.

Should the team decide it can mount a challenge for the America’s Cup Dubai will be the last regatta in mono-hulls for some time as the team’s focus switches to big catamarans.