Je suis le gate-crasher

By ALAN PERROTT


Moet & Chandon bubbly, Romanesque nibbles and the cheese board from hell - Louis Vuitton Cup racing should be indulged in a civilised fashion.

When your belly is full, you even get to behold the yachts close up and in their natural environment.

They are hard to recognise minus skirts and cradles, but a knife through butter doesn't come close to describing their motion.

Even so, an almost-superyacht ride on the Hauraki Gulf as pairs of sloping masts disappear into the distance means most of your time is spent watching a rocking telly.

Our vessel du jour, the Le Defi Arevachartered Quest II, is fitted with two mighty plasma screens for live television and the spiffy Virtual Spectator race simulator.

We may have been sharing the gulf with an economy's worth of billionaires, but that was no guarantee all this whiz-bang on-board science was going to work.

A foul-up somewhere made the high-tech graphics as useful as pre-loved chewing gum, and angry cellphones trilled over the waves.

Luckily for our French crewmates, their fluorescent challenger was first out of the blocks, so they toasted a few minutes of dedicated telly time before their cup hope became just another anonymous mast drifting across the horizon.

Then it was back to the spread - pass the crackers, merci mate - while awaiting depressing updates on how the French challenge crew wasn't doing so well against Russell Coutts and his new Swiss friends.

Speaking of whom, the French say "lay off Russ". Just be proud the rest of the world is so keen on nicking our sailors. Whatever.

Still, impressive nibbles and Russell aside - whose Alinghi swamped the French- it's an odd sort of event for us locals.

We're hosting, we have a very vested interest in how it all pans out, yet we are very much on the sidelines - virtual competitors awaiting our turn.

We sit and watch the fun and games when the boats leave dock -- the Italians made the best racket and the Brits have the best-dressed band -- but it still feels like crashing someone else's school reunion.

Then, just as we began losing ourselves in all the foreign flamboyance, a nice dinkum touch brought everyone back to Aotearoa.

As the floating money paraded out of the Viaduct they passed the stern harbourmaster, with short-sleeved blue overalls and crossed arms, in his tiny wash-tossed boat.

Not a word, but he still screamed, "Settle down, you noisy buggers!"


nzherald.co.nz/americascup

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