The high g-forces the sailors feel during racing turns and crew crossovers sailing the superfast America’s Cup Class 50-foot foiling catamarans mean more crew overboard drills are likely.

Teams practising in Bermuda have had their share of splashes.

A video of Graeme Spence falling off the forward crossbeam of Oracle Team USA went viral. Other overboard incidents have been reported to The Royal Gazette off the record. These have gone unnoted by the public.

New Zealand’s Helmsman Peter Burling was the third member of the New Zealand crew take a dive.

“He just took a step at the wrong time and next thing he was gone over the back,” said grinder Joe Sullivan

Since launching their race boat six weeks ago, Emirates Team New Zealand have been on Auckland’s Waitemata Harbour, fine-tuning their systems and crew work in their quest for more speed and performance gains.

Dana Johannsen, the New Zealand Herald’s chief sports reporter, wrote: “The team is quietly confident their boat, christened New Zealand Aotearoa — the Maori name for the country meaning the long white cloud — will be among the best of the teams in Bermuda.

The big risk the team’s designers have taken is in their radical pedal-powered grinding set-up.

Six weeks on from the big reveal of the shock innovation, much of the fascination ... still lies in the pedal-grinding systems.”

The biggest question that remains is how efficiently the crew crosses to the new high-side hull during tacks and gybes made at speeds at more than 45mph. Some reports have two grinders staying put on each side. So there would be no crossover by grinders at all.

Others indicate they are making the big crossover parade like the arm-grinders on the other boats.

Johannsen’s reports that grinder Guy Endean says there were a few times early on when he had problems either disengaging from the pedals or clipping himself back in, but he believes by the time the team hits the starting line in Bermuda on May 26, the motion will have become second nature for them.

Glenn Ashby, New Zealand’s skipper and sailing director, feels it is probably a good thing his team has had to deal with a few mishaps in their training runs.

The nature of sailing the high-powered racing machines on the edge is that one small misstep and things can go bad quickly. That is a challenge that excites rather than scares him.

“We’re just looking forward to getting over there [to Bermuda]. It has been great here [training in New Zealand], but there comes a point where you have to draw a line in the sand. We could stay here training for another couple of years and keep on developing, but you’ve got to go racing at some stage, and now is that time.”

In an interview with stuff.co.nz, Ashby said: “Every day you have a few of those moments where you think, ‘Oooh we got away with that one’. It’s the quest of developing,” He likened this America’s Cup to motorsport.

“If it’s MotoGP or Formula One through the testing phase in the off season, that learning and development is where you have most of your thrills and spills.”

“When it comes race time, hopefully you are nice and smooth and know your settings really well. Ashby concluded, “That’s definitely the programme at the moment.”