Kevin Shoebridge: ‘We feel confident within the team’

JC: This is a really grandiose environment to be announcing the America’s Cup Partnership. It’s a momentous milestone but does it feel like now that the ACP has been announced, that we can put an end to stories about lawyers and paperwork and start to talk about boats and sailing again?

KS: It is a really big moment in the history of the America’s Cup – I would probably say one of the biggest in the last 170 years – so it definitely feels appropriate to do it in this beautiful palace here in Naples. Not everyone in our team has been involved in that, but a few of us have and it’s been a pretty long year.

You know, it’s dangerous to ever forget about the sailing and the technology and the designing, so that has carried on in the background. But, for sure, it was really nice to get this confirmed and done, have all the teams locked in, and start looking forward to starting racing this year.

JC: Every America’s Cup cycle I start by asking you or Dalts how beatable you guys are – and one of you tells me how worried you are about getting it done this time. So, how do you feel about it this time?

KS: We feel confident within the team. We are a pretty well-oiled machine now [because] we have been running a long time. We have got a lot of good people and I think the way we run ourselves has become really efficient.

We have a lot of strong leaders within the group. So there’s not just two people making decisions, there’s 10 people making decisions.

We are also refreshing the team, which we do after every campaign to try and plug gaps and get stronger where we thought we could have done better – because if you think you did everything perfectly last time then you are in trouble.

So that’s what we have been working on over the last year. Now the sailing programme is well underway in Auckland. So all good...