The Institution of Professional Engineers NZ hosted the road trip to celebrate its centenary year.
Kensington says the Kiwis kept an eye on Oracle and noticed changes such as those on dagger boards when the boat was winched in and out but, generally, they were in the dark.
"Often the boats are different beasts in themselves so you have to focus on what you're doing because if you start looking at them then you lose track of what you're supposed to do."
The Dean Barker-skippered Team NZ were very surprised to have started well up wind against Jimmy Spithill's Oracle. "If Oracle hadn't changed their boat they would have lost it very quickly."
The modifications in the middle stages were evident in the edge-of-the-seat last two races Team NZ won.
"By that stage of the campaign we were very even and they had worked very hard to close the gap and they just kept improving."
For the Kiwi camp it was a case of "trying to keep level emotions".
"That means we weren't trying to go on highs and lows and everyone was just trying to go about doing their jobs to keep our focus.
"All top sportsmen will go into events in the same way as a process. You know they'll eat their lunch in the same place so you basically keep doing what you're doing."
Having been through the Louis Vuitton Series for about three months before challenging for the cup against Oracle Team USA, Kensington says Team NZ had found a degree of consistency, albeit against weaker challenges.
Both teams had to make a call by the end of each day (around, for example, 6pm) what the configurations of their boats were.
"You had to make decisions on what rudder you were going to use, what daggerboard and what steerings, based on what the forecast was."
Kensington couldn't put his finger on the extent of changes Team NZ made to try to push them over the line but hastens to point out they had spent three years preparing the Black Boat.
"We got to a point where by the time Oracle had caught up all the lay days were used.
"All the spare time that Oracle had at the start of the regatta was non-existent for us because we were racing every day."
Conversely, the blustery days in the early stages bought Oracle valuable time to modify.
He reckons it was too risky for Team NZ to make major alterations and not test it when it came down agonisingly to the business end of the cup challenge.
Time, he says, is a valuable commodity and money makes a difference but only at crucial stages. "What money can do is create a little bit of time or it can get you out of a fix that you can get yourself into."
Oracle, for example, capsized their boat and wrote off a "wing" which is worth multiple-million dollars.
"For that sort of thing, having Larry's cheque-book will fix the boat and get you back on track because you can employ more people and those sorts of things," he says of Oracle owner Larry Ellison.
Had Barker encountered a similar crisis, he says, Team NZ would have been back campaigning. "Where does that sort of money come from?
"We built two wings but Oracle built four."
However, Team NZ were happy with what they had achieved relative to the amount of money they had invested.
"In some ways not having unlimited money can be a good thing because you then evaluate your decisions carefully to decide which way you want to go.
"I think we invested our money wisely on things that made a difference, which is important because Artemis had way more money than us - way more and twice our budget," says Kensington.
