Artemis Racing became the first to sail with an AC72 wing rig, and 12 days of sailing later, the Swedish team became the first to break one. A four-month set-back, in the estimation of Paul Cayard, the team boss.

But the catastrophic failure of the 130ft rig was no catastrophe, Cayard claims. “Start early, break early,” he said. Better that this happened in May 2012 rather than May 2013, was his positive assessment of a bad day at the office in Valencia, the team’s training ground. In any case, Cayard says the team plans to go to windy San Francisco next year with three wings ready to race.

The rules for the 34th Cup state that no one is allowed to launch an AC72 until 1 July this year, and Artemis had been planning to get sailing on or very soon after that date. However they’ve earned some early wing experience by sailing with their prototype rig on an old ORMA 60 French trimaran, about as close a piece of existing technology that you could hope to find for the AC72.

For the first time in the America’s Cup, teams are restricted in terms of how many days’ sailing they are allowed to do on the AC72s. Similar to the limits imposed on Formula One motor racing teams and the track testing time that has long been part of their sport, the aim is one of limiting cost. Artemis and the other well-funded teams will be doing everything they can to make best possible use of the maximum 30 days allotted for sailing an AC72 during 2012.

Artemis wanted to be the first to launch an AC72 but, after the wing breakage, that no longer looks likely. Oracle’s wing and crossbeams were recently delivered to the team base in San Francisco, having been constructed in New Zealand. Under competition rules, the hulls must be built in the country that a team represents, and Oracle’s USA-built hulls will soon be matched up with the rest of the boat.

One of the key members of Oracle’s design team is Dirk Kramers, who masterminded the engineering on Alinghi’s beautiful but ill-fated catamaran from the last America’s Cup. And now Kramers is reunited with Alinghi’s former design co-ordinator Grant Simmer, who joins Oracle as general manager. Barely two years have passed since Oracle’s wing-masted trimaran wrenched the Auld Mug away from Alinghi’s soft-sailed catamaran, the swift and brutal 2-0 conclusion of three years of court battles and mudslinging. But now that is all water under the bridge, and old enmities have been cast aside as Oracle continues to hire the most experienced Cup campaigners in the business.

Simmer navigated Australia II to her famous victory in Newport almost 30 years ago and has been a prime mover in the America’s Cup ever since. He has seen it all, and Simmer can’t wait to get stuck in again, working once more with Russell Coutts rather than against him.

“Having won the America’s Cup with and without Russell, and then having been beaten by his team in 2010, I think we have healthy respect of each other’s abilities and what it is required to win,” says Simmer. “It’s good to be working together again.”