Team New Zealand has sailed the Bay of Naples for the first time, and the early signs are that the defenders like the water they will be racing on when the America’s Cup comes to Italy in 2027.
The team took its two AC40 boats onto the course this week for an opening session, timed to fall almost exactly a year out from the next Cup. Rather than the grey chop of a WaitematΔ Harbour winter, the crew found warm weather and a steady sea breeze of 10 to 15 knots rolling across the bay, close to the conditions they expect to meet when the racing counts.
Skipper Nathan Outteridge said getting on the actual racecourse in the same part of the year that the regatta will be run was too good a chance to pass up. “To get a first-hand look at the racecourse and start feeling out the conditions in the exact window we’ll be racing in next year is a massive opportunity for us,” he told RNZ.
The visit matters because so much of an America’s Cup campaign is spent guessing at what a foreign venue will actually throw up. Wind strength, the shape of the sea breeze, how the land around a bay bends the air, the size of the waves and even the crowd of spectator boats all shape how a team builds its yacht and trains its sailors. Every day the crew spends on the real water is a day they are not working from a computer model or a weather file. Sailing the Bay of Naples this early lets Team New Zealand start banking that local knowledge while there is still time to use it.
Naples was confirmed as the host of the 38th America’s Cup back in 2025, when Team New Zealand chose the southern Italian city over Barcelona, which staged the last edition. The choice raised eyebrows at the time given how well the racing went in Spain, but the bay under the shadow of Mount Vesuvius offers reliable sea breezes and a stretch of water close enough to shore for spectators to see the boats up close. For a country that has never hosted the Cup, the tourism and sailing interest around Naples has been strong.
Team New Zealand goes into the defence chasing a third straight win in the oldest trophy in international sport, having lifted the Cup in Bermuda in 2017, held it at home in 2021 and kept it in Barcelona in 2024. No syndicate has held the Auld Mug for three editions in a row in the modern era, so the stakes for the New Zealand programme are more than just another title.
This defence, though, has a very different look from the ones before it. Peter Burling, the helmsman who steered the team to all three of those wins, is no longer in the boat. Burling and Team New Zealand parted ways after the last campaign, and he has since joined the Italian challenger Luna Rossa, where he sits in the leadership and design group rather than at the wheel. In his place the team turned to Outteridge, the Australian Olympic gold medallist and former co-helm who now leads the sailing side as skipper. The team has also been steadily adding to its crew, bringing in experienced hands including fellow Australian Iain Jensen as it rebuilds around the new line-up.
The switch has already produced some awkward moments. At a pre-regatta press conference in Cagliari earlier this year, Burling sat alongside his former team as a rival for the first time. Then his new Luna Rossa crew went out and beat Team New Zealand in the match-race final of the Sardinia preliminary regatta in May, handing the Italians the first silverware of the new cycle and giving the defenders an early reminder that the man who won them three Cups now knows their methods from the inside.
That result has sharpened the build-up to the next milestone on the calendar. The second preliminary regatta runs from 24 to 27 September, and the entry list shows how crowded the field has become. Alongside Luna Rossa and Team New Zealand, the fleet is set to include Team USA, Team Australia, La Roche-Posay, the Swiss syndicate Alinghi, Britain’s GB1 and the new Athena team. It is one of the deeper challenger line-ups the Cup has seen in years, and every one of them will be trying to work out the same Bay of Naples that the New Zealanders sampled this week.
For now the defenders will take the encouragement where they can find it. A first day on a warm, breezy course, a year out from the biggest regatta in the sport, is exactly the kind of start Team New Zealand wanted. The hard part, turning a promising venue and a rebuilt crew into a fourth successive defence, is still to come. You can read more on the venue and the wider campaign at the NZ Herald’s America’s Cup coverage.
What do you make of Team New Zealand’s chances in Naples without Peter Burling at the wheel? Have your say in the comments below.
This article was written by AI, briefed to report the facts, hopefully without some of the bias people bring to the job π
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