Homecoming: Sailor happy to escape fog

Brad Butterworth, Switzerland-based tactician for America's Cup holders Alinghi

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Taciturn tactician Brad Butterworth is delighted to be home for the holidays - because Alinghi's timetables means he probably won't be able to be back next Christmas.

He made it home for Christmas with wife Maree and kids Claudia, 8, and Amber, 4, for three weeks after leaving Geneva, Switzerland, "Where at the moment, you're sitting under blanket of fog for about three months".

He admits to being surprised, getting off the plane, at "how clean New Zealand is, the air ... and those fresh blue mornings".

In Auckland he is staying with family and friends, and will spend time at his in-laws' Taupo home.

Butterworth, 43, was part of the KZ7 team in 1987 and the New Zealand team which reached the finals of the Louis Vuitton series in 1992.

He was a member of Team New Zealand when it won the America's Cup in 1995 and 2000.

But in 2001 he moved to Geneva after pledging his loyalty to Alinghi, bankrolled by Swiss biotechnology billionaire Ernesto Bertarelli.

There's no loyalty when money is involved, sniffed the critics, some of them vociferous. But sailing has indeed made Butterworth a wealthy man - this year's National Business Review Rich List estimated he was worth $14 million.

So how does being away change your perspective on a small island nation at the end of the world?

"You realise just how far away New Zealand is from the big powerful nations like Europe and the United States," says Butterworth.

"For me I think the beauty of New Zealand is its uniqueness - there's no other place like it."

His New Zealandness has contributed to his success, agrees Butterworth, and he puts it down to Kiwi ingenuity in problem-solving. It's an attribute in every person he has worked with, he says, and jokes that even though the Swiss don't always understand the approach, they don't care if it will let them retain the Cup.

America's Cup campaigns need to be created from scratch, and at present Butterworth and the other members of the Alinghi team are working in Geneva office on tools to design their next boat.

Butterworth hasn't sailed since the America's Cup - Lake Geneva doesn't really cut it - but intends getting back into it early next year, competing in international regattas.

Anything we can learn from his adopted home? Butterworth describes Switzerland as "run like a big company".

They have seven people that run it - the "magic seven" as they call the Swiss Federal Council - and you realise that they run a huge economy, with a lot less bureaucracy than we have.

Having said that, he says, efficiency comes at a cost: "When you live there you're watched by Big Brother pretty closely. If they don't know who you are, you can't get anything - buy a mobile phone, get a car.

"But the problems we have here are quite small ... "

Europe seems a "bit of a dangerous place" at the moment.