Mark Chisnell’s Diary

The OneWorld Challenge navigator reports on the Auckland action

There's been plenty of America's Cup news this past couple of weeks and for a change it's not OneWorld dominating the front pages... First there was Paul Cayard's change of role within the Oracle Racing syndicate. Then Team New Zealand dramatically dropped a mast on the Hauraki Gulf ten days ago and finally Oracle's little mishap with their keel last week. We had both our boats in the shed when Oracle lost their keel and didn't envy them the recovery job as a front slid in and it cranked forty knots in the squalls.

But we were out racing when Team New Zealand lost their mast and it happened just a mile or two away. Conditions were similar to the day our mast came down (and pretty similar to every other day for the last month - we're stuck in Groundhog Day out here) - 18 knots or so with plenty more in the puffs.

We sent over a chase boat to see if they needed any help, returning the courtesy they provided us, but the polished TNZ programme had it fully under control. Although we had to postpone one of our pre-starts as they needed to tow back through our starting area.

Better news for the America's Cup community was the arrival of the first of the new boats. The New Zealand Herald reported that Russell Coutts' first Swiss boat, and the Swedish Victory Challenge yacht flew down to Auckland on the same Antonov plane.

The Swiss are right next to us in the Viaduct Basin, and it's been pretty amazing watching their lilac-palace of a shore base grow from bare tarmac - but not as interesting as them getting operational out on the Gulf in the first of the new generation IACC yachts.

Meanwhile, we've been pounding out laps on the circuits in the gym and the windward-leewards in our training boats, USA 51 ( America True) and USA 55 ( Stars and Stripes). Both Ben Ainslie and I have managed to sprain an ankle in the last three weeks, so that's slowed us up a bit. But some American football-style strapping and intensive physio treatment has got us out on the water again very quickly.

We've also been fitting in some pretty cool experiments, dreamt up by our team's wealth of engineers and designers. They're not all winners, but every experiment has a result and the most interesting ideas have lots of potential for our programme, and perhaps for a dramatic influence on sailing as they trickle down to the mainstream in the years to come.