Emirates Team New Zealand News

Two extreme AC72 foiling catamarans with wing sails went head-to-head at over 40 knots in San Francisco Bay, California. The teams were competing in the 2013 Americas Cup Challenge which took place from September 7-21, 2013. Anyone watching the first few days of Americas Cup sailing will know that it looked like Emirates Team New Zealand had a seemingly untouchable lead – then out of the blue Oracle Team USA completed one of the greatest comebacks in sport to win the 34th America’s Cup.

Powered by ANSYS solutions to maximize yacht aerodynamics, 'Emirates Team New Zealand' has captured the Louis Vuitton Cup and won the right to compete in the 34th America's Cup. Faced with the challenge of making fast design improvements to its yacht to stay hyper-competitive, Emirates Team New Zealand used a 100 percent simulation-driven development process — eliminating the need for physical prototypes. Team engineers used ANSYS® computational fluid dynamics (CFD) solutions to virtually test different designs, considering up to 750 operating conditions per design.

Emirates Team New Zealand’s ‘AC72’ catamaran is on its way to San Francisco to compete in the America’s Cup regatta, courtesy of sponsor Maersk Line. The Port of Auckland witnessed a spectacular sight recently as the massive 72-foot multihull yacht, named ‘New Zealand’, was hoisted out of the water and placed safely onto the deck of the Maersk Jubail. It’s break bulk cargo to Maersk Line, but to Emirates Team New Zealand (ETNZ), twice winner of the Americas Cup, it’s the start of their journey to win back the coveted trophy.

The America’s Cup World Series, San Francisco, is part of what is being billed as the busiest week of events in the city’s history. “We have a challenging program this week,” said regatta director Iain Murray. “We’re working with Fleet Week, so most of our racing will be later in the day. On Super Sunday we’ll be participating in the air show with Fleet Week. The air show will start and then stop, we’ll sail our Super Sunday fleet race (scheduled to start at 1:55 pm PDT), and then the air show will resume.

America’s Cup racing returns to the United States next month when the AC World Series brings nine of the top sailing crews in the world to Newport, R.I. The American team, ORACLE TEAM USA, currently leads the AC World Series by one point, so the final stop on the 2011-12 AC World Series circuit will determine the overall winner of the first-ever season. Nine crews from seven countries are competing in the AC World Series, including: Artemis Racing (Sweden), skipper Terry Hutchinson…