Terry Hutchinson has been chasing the America’s Cup for his entire career.
That has been the ultimate goal for the Harwood native ever since he became a professional sailor directly out of Old Dominion University, where he was a two-time College Sailor of the Year.
Hutchinson has been part of four previous America’s Cup campaigns as a sailor beginning in 2000 as mainsail trimmer for AmericaOne. He came closest to capturing the America’s Cup in 2007 as tactician for Team New Zealand, which won the challenger series but lost to Alinghi Racing in the championship match.
In 2018, Hutchinson took the lead in forming his own America’s Cup syndicate — founding American Magic with the financial backing of billionaire businessmen Doug DeVos and Hap Fauth.
Fast forward to 2024 and Hutchinson is still trying to capture the America’s Cup, albeit now as team management and not an on-water sailor. The 1986 St. Mary’s High graduate is president of sailing operations and skipper for American Magic, which is mounting a second attempt to claim the Auld Mug.
After spending more than two decades pursuing sailboat racing’s holy grail, would winning the America’s Cup be just as sweet for Hutchinson without doing so as a competitive sailor aboard the boat?
“It’s certainly something that you grapple with,” Hutchinson told The Capital during a phone interview from Barcelona, where he is helping American Magic prepare for the 37th America’s Cup regatta with the AC75 Patriot. “Ultimately, it’s a team sport. Whenever I have been with Bella Mente or Quantum Racing, we always won or lost as a team. My job here is to facilitate having this boat win. If we’re fortunate to be successful, it will absolutely be just as satisfying.”
Following a disappointing result in the 2021 Prada Cup challenger series, American Magic shut down operations for almost a year while the syndicate leadership decided whether or not to move forward. DeVos and Fauth elected to continue their pursuit of the America’s Cup with one caveat — that Hutchinson focus his energy and expertise on managing the sailing team.
“Doug and Hap asked that I step off the boat and support the sailing team ashore — to help facilitate the success on the water. Our personal relationships are the foundation for the whole campaign and it was out of respect for them that I agreed with that suggestion,” Hutchinson said. “We decided it would be best to have the sailors with more experience in the foiling boats on the race crew.”
Hutchinson was grateful DeVos and Fauth committed to continue their financial support of the syndicate, while at the same time making it clear that doing so was the logical choice.
“Doug and Hap are experienced sailors and understood that in many ways we were a start-up program,” he said. “We faltered a little bit, but also made tremendous progress. We’d done way too much work and developed too great an infrastructure to let all that go.”
American Magic reboot
This marks the second iteration of the AC75 Class design rule, which calls for a 75-foot monohull featuring wing-like hydrofoils that lift the high-tech boats out of the water. American Magic has worked hard to assemble a roster filled with sailors that have significant foiling experience.
New to the team for the 37th America’s Cup is Australian Tom Slingsby, the 2012 Olympic gold medalist in Laser class. The 39-year-old from Sydney won the inaugural SailGP series as skipper for the Australian entry aboard the F50 foiling catamarans.
“Tom’s skill set is on display in SailGP and he is the most current of our sailing team in that [foiling] world,” Hutchinson said. “Tom is an incredibly talented sailor, but it would be an unreasonable expectation to think he is going to win this regatta for American Magic. It’s always a team effort and all the sailors abroad along with the 171 people supporting them are critically important in their own way.”
Slingsby serves as starboard helmsman with Michael Menninger as the flight controller and trimmer on that side. Paul Goodison is port helmsman and is backed by Andrew Campbell as flight controller and trimmer.
Goodison was aboard American Magic as main trimmer for the 2021 America’s Cup, while Campbell was a flight controller. Menninger is new to the team.
Hutchinson serves as sounding board, providing ideas and dispensing advice. During training sessions, he follows Patriot in a speedy motorboat, then imparts his observations during debrief sessions.
“Not racing on the boat provides a different perspective. In a lot of ways, you can help more by riding around in a chase boat because you have more time to see and think about things,” Hutchinson said.
“It’s really difficult to coach Tom Slingsby, Paul Goodison, Andrew Campbell and Michael Menninger because they’re all great sailors and really good at their jobs,” Hutchinson added. “My job is to support their instincts and try to present a different perspective when necessary. To be good at my job I have to make sure I’m listening and understanding the science behind the boat.”
Completing the crew aboard the American Magic AC75 are four cyclists. They replace grinders by using leg muscles to power the boat’s hydraulic systems. Hutchinson said the team intends to rotate a total of 10 cyclists because of the physicality of their job.
After making the decision to continue the American Magic campaign, the first thing the syndicate leadership did was hire Scott Ferguson as design coordinator. He was responsible for assembling a 45-member design team. Britton Ward, an Annapolis resident and vice president of Farr Yacht Design, teamed with Pete Melvin to design the hull.
Technological marvels
Hutchinson has been pleased with the AC75 the design team produced. This second generation version of Patriot is much smaller and lighter (by 1,000 kilograms) than its 2021 predecessor. By rule, the foil arms are 250 millimeters longer and the foil box is bigger than American Magic’s previous AC75.
Designers removed three athletes from the boat and switched from arm to leg power. American Magic was the only competing syndicate that chose to put its cyclists in the recumbent position.
“I think this Patriot is impressively different from the previous version. Aerodynamically it’s a much better boat,” Hutchinson said. “It’s also a boat that’s designed to be very good in maneuvers and taking off quickly. Our goal was to highlight the things we didn’t do well in AC 36 and improve upon those, which I think we did.”
These 75-foot foiling monohulls are technological marvels with the massive wingsail very much like an airplane wing. Hutchinson said the newest Patriot can achieve takeoff in just six knots of breeze and can reach speeds of 50 knots in just 17 knots of wind with flat water.
Some purists argue that this is no longer true sailing and cite the fact so much of the AC75 operation relies on hydraulic systems to support that stand. Crew members don’t hoist or douse the sails or perform many of the other tasks that are commonplace aboard typical sailboats.
Hutchinson disagrees with that assessment and said strategy, tactics, trimming and overall sailing skill are still important. Boat-handling and setup are also still critical. The Anne Arundel County Sports Hall of Fame member compared it to the difference between driving a standard vehicle compared to a Formula 1 race car.
“Everything is amplified even more because the speeds of these boats are so much higher. If the boat is out of balance it becomes catastrophic to performance,” he said. “All the same sailing principles apply, it’s just a vastly different platform.”
American Magic’s schedule called for 18 months of design time, 12 months of build time and six months of sailing. In terms of actual competition, the Louis Vuitton Cup begins Aug. 29 and concludes Oct. 7.
At the end of Round Robin 2, which concludes Sept. 8, one of the five challengers will be eliminated with the top four advancing to the semifinals.
“The hard part of the America’s Cup is that you do years of hard work for eight weeks of racing,” Hutchinson said. “It’s a massive investment for very little racing.”
All six participating syndicates will get a chance to gauge the competition during the Louis Vuitton Preliminary Regatta, which begins Thursday in Barcelona. Italy’s Luna Rossa Prada Pirelli is the Challenger of Record, while other contenders are Ineos Britannia (Great Britain), Alinghi Red Bull Racing (Switzerland) and Orient Express Racing (France). Defender Team New Zealand will participate in the preliminary regatta to test its AC75.