Jimmy Spithill can hardly wait to take delivery of the racing yacht that Oracle Team USA will use to defend their America’s Cup title in the Great Sound next year.

“As a sailing team, we can’t wait to get our hands on it and learn how to get the most out of it,” Spithill, the Oracle skipper, said. “What we will be doing on these AC50s will blow people’s minds.”

Oracle’s new wing-sailed foiling catamaran is gradually taking shape at Core Builders Composites in New Zealand.

The major components for the 15 metre platform such as the hulls and cross beams have already been built while the systems, wings and foils will remain in a state of constant development and testing up until the final race of the America’s Cup in June next year.

“We’re pleased with our progress,” Grant Simmer, the Oracle general manager, said. “We’re on track to launch the boat in Bermuda in January, but we have a lot of work to do before then.

“We will keep testing and training as much as we can here as we develop our systems, our foils and our sailing techniques, but having this boat ready to launch early in the new year will be a big campaign milestone.”

Spithill added: “The completion of the boat we race in the America’s Cup in June next year will be a major accomplishment. We’re not there yet, but it’s nice to see how far along things have come.

“This is a real tribute to the long hours and hard graft a lot of people are putting in so that we’ll be in a position to win races next summer.”

The never-before raced America’s Cup Class is an enlargement of the team’s AC45 testing platform and will be the most technologically advanced yacht in America’s Cup history.

“From what we’ve seen in testing the AC45S boats, these new boats will be real weapons,” Spithill said. “They are really the Formula One on the water.”

According to protocol governing the 35th America’s Cup, competitors are prohibited from launching their America’s Cup Class yachts before December 27 of this year, or 150 days before the start of the America’s Cup Qualifiers.

Founded in 2000 by Larry Ellison, the American billionaire, and competing under the banner of the Golden Gate Yacht Club in San Francisco, Oracle are gunning for a third successive America’s Cup victory, and are the first team to defend their title in neutral waters by choice.