2013 McDougall + McConaghy International Moth World Championship Day 3 from US Moth Class on Vimeo.

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Tell us about this photo.
It was a close race, and on the windward leg ETNZ had a slight lead. As the two boats approached each other with Emirates on port and Oracle on starboard, Emirates tried to tack on top of Oracle, but their wing articulation hydraulics failed and they couldn’t trim properly. They started to capsize and it seemed to unfold in slow motion. I had a 500mm lens on my camera, which seemed too long as the starboard hull kept lifting and it seemed as if the edges of the frame were getting crowded. I thought I might lose the shot altogether, but knew there was no time to switch cameras, so I just kept shooting. The boat hung at the point where this frame was taken and then started coming back down. Often when something unexpected happens, you don’t have the ideal lens and you end up losing the shot or cropping heavily in an attempt to salvage something. This is the full frame, exactly as I shot it – no skill in that, just luck.

What was it like to be on the water when Emirates Team New Zealand almost capsized?
I was on the aft deck of the TV catamaran and we were following the boats up the course. The TV cat accelerates and decelerates quickly, turns sharply, and sends walls of spray over the deck without warning, so you are never 100% focused on taking pictures, always trying to anticipate the boat’s motion. But when ETNZ started tipping up it was so captivating that I can’t even say whether we were still moving or not. After the starboard hull splashed back into the water I realized that everybody else aboard the boat had been shouting, and I hadn’t heard it before.

What has it been like covering the America’s Cup this year?
There is always something to shoot. The racing is just a small part of the work, and shooting it is often the most relaxing part of the day. There are lots of other activities to shoot and photo requests to fulfill each day, often finishing late with a concert or evening party. Then, of course, there is the editing, always on tight deadline, without time to mull over your decisions. It’s very exciting, even the one-boat races we had early on in the Louis Vuitton Cup were exciting from a photographer’s perspective, but after several months, there is definitely some cumulative fatigue from operating long hours at high intensity day after day – and we are still going!

What are the challenges of taking photos at a high speed, high stakes race like the America’s Cup?
The boats are spectacular. I’m not sure how well that comes through on TV or in the photos, but they are not like anything you have ever seen on the water before. And when you are near them you can appreciate how fast they are really moving, how unstable the are, and how much skill and effort is required to keep them upright. Near is a relative term, though. The umpire boats are quite close, the team chase boats are a bit farther away, and everyone else is farther still. From a photographic perspective we are never close enough. It is very hard to show the faces of the sailors when they are actually racing. Some days I shoot with an 800mm lens in an attempt to capture some emotion, but with the helmets, distance and speed, it is mostly an exercise in frustration.

What camera do you use?
I shoot with Canon cameras. Currently, I am using a 1Dx and a 5D MK III. The 1Dx is faster and has better weather sealing, but it’s a lot more expensive.

What are your favorite shooting conditions?
The rougher the better. The camera has a way of flattening seas, so if you want to show some waves it has to be fairly rough. I’d rather be closer to the action and shooting a wide angle lens than farther away and shooting a telephoto. It’s really about the people first, and the machines they are operating second. I think that people exercising skill and/or determination to manage challenging conditions or difficult equipment makes the best photos.

How did you get started in photography? What did you do for work before you became a photographer?
I started out thinking I would be a marine biologist from the time I was about seven years old. After college I was working working with a scientist at Woods Hole Oceanographic, and, a couple of years into the project, he died from cancer. I had been just about to begin my PhD work at URI, but took a detour and went to work on boats for a while. After some time offshore I returned and decided to go to journalism school. After school I started picking up work in areas I was familiar with – commercial fishing and sailing.

Any advice for aspiring sailing photographers?
Shoot a lot – really a lot – and be fearless about experimenting with your creativity. Then edit your own work with a critical eye. What works and what doesn’t? What message or emotion are you trying to convey to people who will view the image? Spend time looking at established photographers’ work, but try to avoid becoming imitative or derivative. They may have succeeded with their style, but that doesn’t mean it’s the only way to go.

Click here to read a recap of the near capsize.

View more photos from AC34.

Click here for previous installments of the Photo of the Month.

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Rob Salthouse

It was Groundhog Day all over again for everyone involved in the America’s Cup, from fans to sailors to event organizers as Race 14 was postponed Saturday. All except perhaps Oracle Team USA, who must view each day this regatta is extended as a chance to continue to improve and develop their boat, whereas for the favored Emirates Team New Zealand, it prolongs the agony of having that dang trophy in their hot hands.

An unusual fall day in San Francisco saw a rainy front blow through with a southerly breeze during the morning, making it impossible to set a course. The Race Committee had given the teams fair warning of the system, offering up an alternate course, but neither team was interested, preferring to wait until conditions were back to a southwesterly on the course they’ve become accustomed to. Unfortunately that never transpired.

Meanwhile it must be a great time for Air New Zealand, as many Kiwi fans have changed their plane tickets in order to stick around, while other Kiwis can’t get home soon enough, like Rob Salthouse, who runs the ETNZ fairings program. As part of the shore crew, Salthouse is longing for a day off and a sleep-in. The work of the ETNZ shore crew is pretty much around the clock, as Salthouse explained, “You certainly work pretty long hours, and you don’t get a lot of breaks. That’s probably the biggest thing about this event. When I think about what I’m looking forward to the most, a sleep-in would be good.”

Salthouse, a sailmaker and boat builder from New Zealand, has been involved in the Cup since Perth in 1986-’87. He worked for the Kiwi team in the ‘88 and ‘92 campaigns, skipped a few, and then rejoined the Kiwis for Valencia in ’07. He was brought in quite late in the current campaign to fill a gap that had developed with the AC72: to manage the Fairings program, a whole new role for these boats.

“I started off part-time to help the team from December last year through February, and I’m still here,” Salthouse said laughing. “The fairings have become a key component with the speed these boats are doing. As windage and drag become a big thing, we’ve been able to see potential and real gains in certain areas with the aero package that we’ve put on the boat. Coming from a sail-making background, this has been really exciting for me to be involved in. It’s all aero-related and fits in pretty nicely.”

The ETNZ daily routine is similar to their competition down the road. The team’s day starts with a 7 a.m. breakfast meeting, and by 7:30 they’re into work, with the first part of the day spent preparing the boat for weighing and measurement, which takes about an hour. A wing lift meeting is held about 7:40 a.m., and shortly thereafter the wing and platform are pushed out of the shed. Salthouse says it takes about 70 people to get the Kiwi wing on and the boat into the water. It takes about an hour from the time to push out of the shed, lift the boat, and get it onto the mooring.

“The tricky bit about it is that we’ve always got to keep the wing head to wind so if you have a swirly breeze you have to be ready to rotate the boat platform under the wing at any stage, so it’s quite a critical phase while you’re connecting everything up etc.,” Salthouse said.

By about 10:40 a.m., ETNZ sails up to the America’s Cup Park and onto the mooring there, where fans get a great close-up view of the fantastic Aoteoroa, as the Kiwi boat is named, and support boats. A team of 40 to 45 people are on the water everyday including sailors, chaseboat and support crew. After racing the morning procedure is repeated: Two tugs plus a tender placed alongside the boat are used to bring the 72 to position within a pen, the crane is then connected to the boat to lift it from the water.

“That’s also a tricky stage,” Salthouse explained, “because once again you have to keep it all head to wind, and then as you lift and swing the boat over with any breeze you’re pretty vulnerable to it moving around. We have 10 tag lines on the boat to help steady it and keep it rotated in the right direction.”

The boat is pulled out and put on a cradle, the wing comes out, and the boat is rolled into the shed followed by the wing. That’s when the shore crew start and get into the post-race checks. In each of the areas (rigging, wing, structural) every little detail is checked on the boat to make sure there are no issues. It takes the Kiwis a minimum of two hours to do a thorough check on everything, a clean and polish of the boat takes about two hours, then the nightshift crew of seven guys stays on to do any other jobs that need to be done.

Work aside, the Kiwis have made time for an important ingredient in Kiwi sports: beer. Some of the enthusiasts on the team got into brewing their own home brew back in Auckland, and the management of a local San Francisco pub agreed to continue to brew the same beer for the Kiwis during their stay. The beer is called “Big Cat” after the bar back in NZ where the boys would have a few quiet drinks every Friday night, says Salthouse. “I’m not a real big fan of the brew, but it’s gone down quite well at times for sure!”

Speaking of Kiwi beer, Salthouse is looking forward to getting home. It’s been a long tour, he says, and breakdown of the base is already under consideration. He thinks it’ll take a minimum of two weeks to get the base and boat broken down and packed into containers. A core team of 20 to 25 bodies will remain in San Francisco to pack up while the rest head home to New Zealand. This will take place as soon as the Kiwis get their likely final win out of the way although, Salthouse cautioned, “We may have to wait for the dust to settle a little bit!”

Salthouse has worked both AC and Volvo campaigns and the obvious difference between the events is the numbers, a Volvo campaign being a lot smaller for starters with about 30 to 35 people in a big team. “You’re working a lot closer together in a Volvo because there’s a lot more overlap than in the AC, so you come out of a Volvo with closer relationships to the people you’ve worked with, not what you’d get in an AC campaign.”

Having said that, Salthouse acknowledges that this AC campaign has been different to others he’s done.

“The culture in this team has had a really good vibe and feel right from the start. There’s a lot of excitement now which keeps us going so that side of it compared to other Cup campaigns I’ve done has been really fantastic and a lot of fun. Hopefully we can get the business done!”

Read about Oracle Team USA’s shore team work here.

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US Multihull 1

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And some action from training before the regatta:

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Nathan Outteridge

The 34th America’s Cup is proving to be the place for Nathan Outteridge to showcase his talents both on and off the water. After a roller-coaster ride with Artemis Racing this past year, the 26-year-old Aussie talent has taken the best of the experience to apply to his own sailing in the 49er and the Moth, as well as to position himself in a good place for the 35th America’s Cup. Over the past week the sailing world has enjoyed the benefit of his knowledgeable commentary from the racecourse of the Red Bull Youth America’s Cup, and now the 34th America’s Cup. While it’s all wrapped and packed up at the Artemis Racing base, the team’s helmsman is taking every opportunity to train on San Francisco Bay for the upcoming 49er World Championship in Marseille, France (September 21 to 29), and the Moth Worlds in October in Hawaii. Here Outteridge talks about all things AC and what’s next on his dance card.

How did you end up commentating for the Red Bull Youth America’s Cup and the AC Final?

NO: I was asked by ACTV to do some guest commentating during the Louis Vuitton Final—being on stage and giving a few comments here and there between races. I guess they liked what I was saying so they asked me to do the Red Bull event for them. It worked out pretty nicely for me, and I was going to be watching the racing anyway.

What was your take-home from the RBYAC?

NO: Pete Burling has just turned 22 so he’s pretty young, but he’s already done two Olympics. Most of these guys are only a few years younger than me. A lot of guys in the Red Bull fleet who’ve been sailing 49ers I’ve been sailing against for six years. To me they’re basically my peers. Their skill level was really high even though they didn’t get a whole lot of time to train in the boats. They could have competed quite easily with the normal World Series teams.

What did you observe in their tactical skills?

NO: I thought they were quite aggressive in what they were doing, but you could see that there was a lack of consistency amongst the boats. Pete seemed to be the only team that had that consistency and ability to get back through the fleet. They were making mistakes thoughout the racing, like they weren’t furling up their sails properly at the bottom mark, which was costing them when they went to deploy them at the top mark, they had knots, etc. By Days 3 and 4, there were none of those mistakes, so you could see their learning curve was still progressing throughout the racing. It was good to see that they were given an opportunity like that. There were no major crashes, no one did anything wreckless—they were just there trying to make their mark in the sport.

Your next event is the 49er Worlds?

NO: Yes, we [myself and Iain Jensen AKA Goobs] haven’t sailed at all since the Olympics. I always like to plan to have something to do after a big event because if you don’t you kind of feel really flat. Goobs and I decided to do the 49er Worlds to touch base again with the 49er fleet and make our big decision on where we’re going to go from here. It’s hard to know exactly what’s going to happen in the Cup until someone wins, and we know where it goes so we have a little time up our sleeve to get back to some racing. This year’s been pretty tough—I’ve done two events and normally I do 20. You feel like you’re missing out on the actual racing. It’s been great to be involved in the team and learn all the America’s Cup team processes, but the racing’s been lacking. So, for the last two weeks Goobs and I have been putting the 49er in the water, and I’ve also been doing quite a lot of Moth sailing for the Moth Worlds.

What have you learned transitioning from the 72 back to the smaller boats?

**NO: **You just learn how much easier little boats are logistically—we can show up, be in the water in half an hour, go sailing for 2 hours, come in, pack up in half an hour, and that’s your day done. Whereas just trying to get the big boat in the water, even the 45, you need extra people to launch the boats, pack the boats up, you need coach and safety boat support, so it’s all the extra things required. It’s much more difficult. We’ve learned so much more about our little 49er sailing just this week, which would take months to do on a big boat just because of the practicalities of the boats.

Foiling and the Moth: what translates from the 72 to the Moth?

NO: I learned a lot from the Moth to put into the 72, and then sailing the 72 and feeling how that works and having a bunch of really smart designers to give you information was really interesting. The main thing I learned was that your control systems are extremely important, and your foil shapes are really important. A lot of my Moth sailing was through feel—you try something, you learn, and you feel the change. I’ve been getting good explanations from some of our design team as to why something happens on my Moth, the logic going on behind it because before I’d keep crashing and just change it until I worked it out. So while translating exactly from the big boat to the Moth is quite different, the principles are still the same. I don’t really have much time to try the ideas for the Moth that we have, but I think in the next year you’ll start to see what we’ve learned throughout the last three years with the 72 will trickle down to little boats, like the Little America’s Cup C-Class—they’re all foiling around like 72s. I’ve been in the 49er class where it’s just myself and my crew and our coach, then we get a few experts come in and help every now and then, and our budget is so small. I spend a lot of time at the base just trying to talk to people on the team, then it’s trying to harness that information and follow it in the right direction.

The Moth is a 100-percent development class; what are the restrictions on improvements?

NO: The only rules for the Moth are the length of the boat, the width of the wings, the area of the sail, and the mast height. Otherwise you can use materials as you like, have as many sets of foils as you like for an event. So I’ve got like three sets of foils, the standard set which I’ve made some tweaks to, another foil coming which we’re going to try to make some changes to for the Worlds to see if what we’ve learnt at Artemis Racing is going to help.

What’s the 49er fleet looking like at the moment?

NO: It’s pretty much the same as it was at the Olympics and before that. A few people have stopped sailing, and there are a few new teams. Pete Burling and Blair Tuke just won the Europeans in the only event they’ve done this year, and they’re our benchmark. We trained with them for four years, and the fact that they won is a good sign because it means no one has jumped up—we think we’re pretty similar to those guys. We’ll be a little bit rusty in our boathandling and we haven’t done any racing, so we’ll have to learn how to get that back pretty quickly.

Are you keen to stay in the Cup environment?

NO: Yes, I’ve really enjoyed my time with Artemis Racing and hopefully that can continue. Then, it just depends on the balance between that and Olympic class sailing, and if I can continue to do the Olympics. It’s very difficult to do two things properly. A lot of it will depend on the timeframe as to when the Cup is and what my involvement is with a team. A lot will also depend on how well we do at the Worlds coming up, to see if we have a year off and don’t fall that far behind. We keep checking in with the fleet, but if we come 25th in the Worlds, it shows we need to put more work in.

Your starts against Luna Rossa were aggressive and confident****—your comments?

**NO: **The whole goal for us with starting is that we knew that we were so underprepared, off the speed, and our boathandling wasn’t as good as Luna Rossa so the only way that we had any chance of beating them was to make sure we were leading around Mark 1. So, we could afford to be a little higher risk in the start whereas Chris Draper, even if he followed us around Mark 1, he’d have passed us as some point. So, he was taking the “don’t engage the other boat” approach, which gave us a chance to take advantage as well as we could. But, having said that, the 72 is not an easy boat to sail. We’d only done eight days of training, so you’re kind of going with gut instincts on what the boat is capable of. One thing we never did was any pre-starts. We knew we could do certain maneuvers but there were some things we just didn’t know so we didn’t put ourselves in that position. We got ourselves into positions in the starts where we knew we were confident. The two starts that we clearly won and then the final start where we won but got a penalty, I thought we did everything we could. Percy’s instructions as a tactian, his calls on time and distance were really good. We had no computer system on the boat because we didn’t have time to develop it. We had our instruments and computer systems that told us wind directions and boatspeeds but there was no number that said, “You are 5 seconds from the line.” I see Ray Davies often open up his little iPad and he’s got a display that’s telling him how much time he’s got to burn for a start. Percy’s doing this all on his own, and it was pretty good to hear him say, “You need to go in 10 seconds.”

Seems like you and Iain have really hit off****— would you agree with that?

NO: We’ve got a really good relationship working together. I think a lot of that comes from the fact that we’ve both been quite successful in the Olympic classes and running our own programs. A lot of the time there are things that you don’t need to do, and we skip straight past that and get to the important things—we’re pretty good at prioritizing what needs to happen. It was highlighted when we got the blue boat in the water. Perc and I knew we didn’t have much time to do any analyzing. He was really instrumental in working with the wing and helping Goobs out with understanding how the wing works, I was in charge of the wing. We’d touch base every day. We worked really well together and trusted what each of us was doing, which was pretty key. When we’re on the water there’s a huge respect for each other out there. I’ve been sailing with Goobs my whole life so it’s like having another person join our team. Then to get the confidence from everyone else in the team, once they see that a few of the key guys on the boat are working well together and on the same page, then everyone else joins you.

How do you like the team environment?

NO: It was initially pretty daunting. I was brought into the team as a reserve helsman, and at the same time Loick Peyron showed up so we had me, Terry [Hutchinson], and Loick. For the first few months it was just interesting watching the dynamic and try to understand where I’m at, where it would end up this year, and how I could best help the team in whatever capacity. For much of the first few months I was just watching and learning, listening to what was going on, hoping at some point I’d get my chance to drive the boat. As soon as I did, I knew it was important to try to give feedback to the design team because this Cup was all about designing a faster boat. I had nothing to do with the design of the boat, but I could help refine it however I could. I think that’s where I just started to give little bits of feedback and that’s how I got into the team and working with Perc, something I could add value to.

What does it feel like helming something that’s going so fast?

NO: It doesn’t feel like it’s going as quick as it is. Upwind you’ll do 20 knots, and that’s faster than most boats ever do. You feel like you’re just cruising along almost slowly except there is so much wind in your face you know you’re going quickly. Your apparent wind is so strong. Because the boats are so big and heavy and the wing is huge, everything happens quite slowly. When you’re foiling downwind, the boat pulses up and down, but it doesn’t feel that fast. But, the moment the windward hull touches the water and the spray comes up to you, that’s when you realize you’re going quick. Whereas on the foiling 45, it’s smaller and it’s a rough ride, very aggressive and jerky, you’re steering with a tiller, you could feel the loads going through your hand, whereas on the wheel on the 72 it was all smooth and dampened out. But the moment you hit 38 knots or so, it gets really twitchy, and then you feel like you’re going really fast.

Your thoughts on a multihull versus a monohull for the next Cup?

**NO: **I think no matter what, the boats are going to change again. I think they overstepped the mark slightly in terms of practicality with the 72. If we go back to keelboats again, my opinion it is a step backwards in terms of design and performance. We’re just touching the tip of the iceberg with what we could do with these boats so that would be slightly disappointing for me from my interest in the design and the faster boats. A refinement of what we currently have would be really good—something smaller. It’s going to get faster no matter what, even if we go smaller. What I think is really important if it stays in foiling catamarans is to ensure that the wing sail size comes down quite a bit so that we can start using code zeros because at the moment you watch the racing, and it doesn’t look that exciting because you go around the top mark and nothing changes. For a lot of people watching, especially specatators who don’t know sailing, they ask, “Are they going up or downwind?” How would you know? So we have a need for downwind sails and get rid of the need for people to be grinding for power, or the control systems have proper stored energy on the boat to control the daggerboards and adjust the rudders and wing. Then we won’t just have human grinders, we’ll have skilled sailors helping the boat get around the racecourse instead of just powering it. At the moment we basically have three people and then everyone else just grinds—a driver, a wing trimmer, and a jib trimmer, and everyone else at some point is just powering the hydraulic system so you can control the wing or boards. You’re not clicking spinnaker poles on or any of the drama that we saw at the Red Bull Youth America’s Cup.

Read an interview with Outteridge’s teammate, Iain Percy.
>Find more from the America’s Cup.

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