Grinding to a halt

Sent home from warm-weather training in Sardinia amid Covid-19 restrictions, grinder Freddie Carr updates us on what is now for INEOS TEAM UK and the America’s Cup

- Freddie Carr

Foiling at 40 knots in the beautiful, flat waters off Cagliari, Sardinia, Freddie Carr allowed himself a smile. The British attempt to win the America’s Cup was going well. Carr and his crewmates on board Britannia, skippered by Sir Ben Ainslie, were getting to grips with their new 75ft charge and with the first pre-Cup regatta looming, the atmosphere in INEOS TEAM UK was upbeat.

Just a few days later, however, Carr and his colleagues were back in Britain, isolated at home amid Covid-19 restrictions, while a skeleton shore team hurriedly packed up the base and dismantled the boat, ready for delivery back to Portsmouth.

What now for INEOS TEAM UK and what now for the Cup? Carr is training several hours a day on a grinder set up in his back garden. The entire INEOS crew is homebound, as are all the rival crews in New Zealand, Italy and USA. All the trial boats are ashore and the build programmes of all the second boats, which will be used in the Cup itself, are inevitably affected. Both warm-up events, the America’s Cup World Series regattas, due to take place in Sardinia and in Portsmouth, have been cancelled. It’s only natural that questions are now being asked about the America’s Cup regatta itself, due to run on the Hauraki Gulf in Auckland early next year. Lockdown restrictions will by then surely be long gone, but the foiling monohulls designed for this Cup are powerful machines. They need taming and meanwhile the clock is ticking. As Carr says, in any America’s Cup “you are chasing hours on the water”.

Conditioning