Good fortune has helped Team NZ get to match-point in the 36th America's Cup, and trimmer Glenn Ashby hopes his lucky charms will help seal the deal today.
Glenn Ashby has always been a superstitious bloke.
“Over the years, you find yourself a pair of lucky undies and you want to wear them again if they’ve done the job for you,” says the 17-time world champion and two-time America’s Cup winner. “I’d have a lucky trapeze harness that I’d resurrect after I’d won a couple of regattas with it.”
And today, with Emirates Team NZ on match-point going into what could well be the final day of this America’s Cup, the sail trimmer will be wearing the lucky socks his young daughters will have laid out in the morning for him. And the shore crew will be ringing his lucky cowbell as he leaves the dock on board Te Rehutai for the Hauraki Gulf racecourse.
Luck was certainly with the defenders in their famous come-from-way-behind win on Monday, but it was all about smart navigation when they notched up one more victory over Luna Rossa yesterday. The closest race yet, the first on ‘The Stadium’ racecourse in the Waitemata Harbour, took Team NZ to a 6-3 advantage in the best-of-13 series with the Italian challengers.
And perhaps it was the Kiwis’ good fortune, too, that the second race of the day on Tuesday didn’t start before the 6pm call-off time, with the wind over the inner harbour becoming increasingly light and fluky.
There’s a touch of the Sir Peter Blake red socks legend about Ashby, Team NZ’s highly respected and decorated Australian sailor.
The cowbell is a talisman that’s brought Ashby and Team NZ fortuity before. It was gifted to Ashby and his wife, Mel, by Swiss friends at Team Tilt, the GC32 foiling multihull crew Ashby has helped to win world titles.
“They gave it to us before the America’s Cup match in Bermuda, and it got rung every day we sailed, and it was a great lucky charm for us,” said Ashby, who was skipper in Bermuda when Team NZ won 7-1.
“So it’s been rung here for the last few days, and it seems to have worked quite well, so I think we’ll hear the cowbell again.”
Ashby’s daughters, Lani and Holly, have chosen a different pair of lucky socks for him to wear every race day in this Cup.
“It’s probably one of the most special things over the last 10 years competing in the America’s Cup - sharing that journey with your kids,” he says. “They were little in San Francisco, and seeing them growing up in Bermuda, then here in Auckland as defenders, is really special.
“I remember watching Australia win the America’s Cup in 1983 when I was six years old. Holly and Lani are not that much older than that now, so hopefully this will be a fantastic memory down the track. It’s a very special thing to share with them as a dad.”
Earlier in the day, when the wind forecast wasn’t looking promising for any racing, Ashby was equally happy to race or rest.
“You train for both scenarios,” he explained. “Obviously the grinders did a huge job [in Monday’s two race victories], and we were all mentally tired as much as physically. But these boys are so well-tuned now, the hard days they can back up, day after day after day. And I slept well.
“It would be nice to carry on the momentum too. Racing is always good when you get a flow on.”
And so it went out on Course C, between North Head and Orakei, where the New Zealanders won their fourth race on the trot.
This was Team NZ CEO Grant Dalton’s vision for the 36th America's Cup – to have racing close to land, accessible to all. It’s a course that’s always promised shifts and opportunities, the way the wind bounces off the many landmarks as well as the quirks of the current and the tide.
And the wind was playing games with the race organisers, swinging around the harbour, and rising and falling in its intensity.
When a race finally got underway in 12-13 knots of breeze, the two AC75s engaged in an exciting tango in the start box. Team NZ managed to cross the line first, but the Italians hung on their hip as they sailed out towards the left boundary and gradually claimed the lead.
What ensued was “the most fun” match race of the series, both teams agreed, with the lead changing at least six times. The Italians just kept their bow in front at the first four marks – the differences never more than nine seconds – but it would all be decided on one wind shift.
Team NZ helmsman Peter Burling managed to keep Te Rehutai in touch for the first four legs, patiently waiting for the opportunity to take control. It came on the last upwind leg, when the Italians – who’d worked so hard to hold the lead - chose the wrong side of the course.
Luna Rossa helmsman Francesco Bruni took the blame for missing the right-hand shift that the Kiwis spotted and quickly turned into an 18s lead through the last gate.
“When we went to that crucial moment, I was in charge unfortunately, and I saw a very light patch in front of me. Honestly, I couldn’t see the black band [of wind on water] - what we call ‘the Kiwi Puff’ now - behind me,” Bruni said.
And that was the race decided. Team NZ flew down the course to cross the line 30s ahead of Luna Rossa.
Burling wasn’t getting cocky. The team would go into the next race to “keep learning and improving”, he said - not focused on securing the America’s Cup.
The Italians were determined to keep sailing with their “elbows out”, as Bruni likes to say, giving Team NZ less room to overtake. But they wouldn’t get another chance yesterday, as the wind dropped to seven knots, funneling out of the harbour.
Ashby wasn’t disappointed the second race was canned. “A big left shift came through and I think everyone was very, very happy with the decision. We’re better off getting out there tomorrow and racing on a fair racecourse,” he says.
So the champagne was taken off the ice, and the silver ewer – the world’s oldest sporting trophy –put back into its glass trophy at the Royal New Zealand Yacht Squadron.
Of course, today may not be Team NZ’s day either. Bruni and co-helmsman Jimmy Spithill maintain Luna Rossa still have plenty to battle for. “I’m excited... we live to fight another day,” Spithill said.
While the sailors on both sides are happy to keep racing – it’s their livelihood and their passion - the wait for an outcome isn’t so easy on their families.
Peter Burling’s parents, Heather and Richard, were on the water in a Team NZ chase boat for the first time on Monday watching the exhilarating but exhausting races.
“You ride the emotional rollercoaster. I think the whole country is - but as families we definitely are,” says Heather, who’s flying the same Kiwi flag she waved in Bermuda four years ago. “We’ll be glad when it’s done.”
Her son isn’t showing any signs of pressure or fatigue, and he’s unlikely to, while the match continues, she says.
“Some of that’s from doing the Volvo round-the-world race, where you’re sleeping a couple of hours then working hard on deck in the Southern Ocean for five or six hours. If you can do that you can do anything.
“I remember him in Bermuda on the second-to-last day saying: ‘We’ve still got heaps of energy, and we’re still raring to go’. But when it finished, he said: ‘Oh man, we now realise how exhausted we are’. The adrenalin keeps them running and that’s who they are.”
