Britain’s challenger for the 37th America’s Cup suffered a setback during training off Barcelona last Friday (16 February) when an electrical fire broke out on one of its boats.

According to Marine Industry News, the crew onboard INEOS Britannia’s AC40 Athena leapt into action after smoke billowed from the forward hatch that contains a lithium battery.

The fire was quickly brought under control by pumping water into the hatch to submerge the battery, which was later safely removed by shore crew, and no injuries were reported.

Athena is one of two training boats, along with fellow AC40 one-design Sienna, being used by the team as it awaits the completion of the final fit-out for its AC75 race boat due in April.

“Fire onboard any boat is always an incredibly difficult situation to manage,” INEOS Britannia skipper and team principal Sir Ben Ainslie said. “I want to personally thank the team for their professionalism and the emergency services for their support.”

Marine Industry News has more on the story HERE.

INEOS Britannia have suffered a setback in their America’s Cup preparations after their T6 test boat capsized twice and caught fire on the water in Mallorca on Wednesday afternoon (8 February).

According to Marine Industry News, the boat got loose with a leeward heel and went bow up, capsizing seconds later. But as the team attempted to right the vessel, it flipped to the other side and turned turtle in the water.

Seawater ingress flooding the boat’s lithium batteries then caused a fire on board, though this was swiftly dealt with.

“We’ve got the boat back in probably the best shape we could considering it went turtle and we’ll re-group and have a look at what the issues are and what caused it,” said skipper and team CEO Sir Ben Ainslie.

“The only positive was that we were about to go into an upgrade window so if this was going to happen, it’s not a bad time.”

The T6 prototype had only had new sails installed last month as part of the team’s winter testing and data-gathering regimen in Palma, as previously reported on Afloat.ie.