Show Notes
The America’s Cup has long been at the cutting edge of yacht racing and we’ve seen incredible development over the last decade or so and a lot of that has to do with Dan Bernasconi. Dan is head designer at Emirates Team New Zealand and played a large hand in things like the evolution of foiling in the America’s Cup, the use of cyclors on Team New Zealand’s boat for the Bermuda campaign in 2017 as well as the design of the AC75 monohulls used in the last edition in Auckland.
Dan’s route to the America’s Cup came via Formula 1, and he talks about the six years he spent with McLaren when they were at the top of the tree, how he then got into the sailing game and how he approaches boat design. He also delves into some of the major developments he’s been behind, the team’s thinking around when to reveal to rival teams some of the latest innovations they’ve been working on and what it’s like when some of the radical design features come off.
More from Broad Reach Radio - The Yachting New Zealand Podcast
The number 202.9 might not mean a lot to most but is a figure Glenn Ashby has become obsessed about. The two-time America’s Cup winner is now leading a group from Emirates Team New Zealand trying to break the wind powered land speed record. They need to go faster than 202.9km/h on the salt flats of Lake Gairdner in South Australia to do it.
New Zealand has a proud tradition in the round the world race and a lot of that started with Ceramco New Zealand in the early 1980s – the first New Zealand-flagged boat to compete in the gruelling event. It was a campaign headed up by Sir Peter Blake and something that captured the imagination of Kiwis everywhere. But disaster struck on the first leg of the race when the boat’s mast came down in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean as the team were vying for the lead. It was a devastating blow for the crew, including Simon Gundry who is today’s guest on Broad Reach Radio.
Karl Budge doesn’t purport to be much of a sailor, but he is one of this country’s leading event organisers having previously turned the ASB Classic into one of the world’s best tennis tournaments. He consistently attracted some of the world’s top tennis players to this country and now he’s looking to sprinkle his magic dust on the New Zealand leg of SailGP.
Karl Budge doesn’t purport to be much of a sailor, but he is one of this country’s leading event organisers having previously turned the ASB Classic into one of the world’s best tennis tournaments. He consistently attracted some of the world’s top tennis players to this country and now he’s looking to sprinkle his magic dust on the New Zealand leg of SailGP.
Mike Sanderson is one of the most successful sailors of his generation. He’s a former World Sailor of the Year, two-time winner of the round the world race including when he skippered ABN Amro to victory in the 2005/06 Volvo Ocean Race, been involved in multiple America’s Cup campaigns, a record breaker, a successful maxi yacht skipper and now co-owner and CEO of Doyle Sails.