KEY POINTS:
During the champagne-sprayed heyday of New Zealand's America's Cup reign, Bruno Trouble was to many the face of the America's Cup.
With his French inflection, dapper dress sense and unstinting love for New Zealand, he was adopted into the hearts of many.
As much as they were happy
days for the City of Sails, they were among Trouble's happiest too. For when the Cup left town with Alinghi in 2003, Trouble's days as co-ordinator of the Louis Vuitton Cup challenger series were numbered too.
The Swiss team and its America's Cup management company took control, shoving aside the man who had been involved with the event as a sailor, skipper and impresario since 1977. Last year, at his lowest ebb, he advised Louis Vuitton that it should sever its 24-year association with the Cup.
But as he spoke down the line from the back of a Paris taxi this week, the zing was back in the 63-year-old's voice. He is busy organising the Louis Vuitton Pacific Series, a regatta next January-February which will draw the America's Cup teams out of the courtroom and back on the water and bring the thrill and prestige of international matchracing back to Auckland.
The series has already been over-subscribed by teams scrabbling to escape their enforced slumber. Since Alinghi defeated Emirates Team New Zealand in Valencia last year, the sport has been mired in legal disputes, primarily between Alinghi and BMW Oracle, but also involving New Zealand.
Originally, Trouble envisaged up to eight teams competing in the series. Instead, he has received 23 inquiries. As of late this week, 13 had officially entered and Trouble believes there is room for one more.
"It's a chance for the teams to go back to the water but also for the teams to survive in some ways and to give their sponsors some visibility," he said. "Most of the teams were in sleeping mode. For once we aren't talking about money - this time teams can come without spending huge amounts of money. They just come with their sailing teams and gear."
The racing on the Waitemata Harbour will take place in four evenly-matched yachts, two of Team New Zealand's and two, Trouble hopes, from San Francisco syndicate Oracle. "I have been to Valencia to negotiate with Russell Coutts to see if we can bring a pair of [Oracle's] boats to New Zealand."
Coutts, the hero-turned-villain who led New Zealand to victory in 1995 and 2000 before skippering Alinghi in 2003, was shut out of the last Cup but has since signed with Oracle and billionaire owner Larry Ellison.
Once all the arrangements are in place, Trouble will move back to his adopted hometown, with his wife, Melanie, and sons Augustin and Paul, now 20 and 19.
"New Zealand has been part of my life for many years. I'm a fond lover of New Zealand and I'm proud of my Kiwi connections."
So much so, that during the last America's Cup, he unashamedly cheered for Team New Zealand. "For sure, it would have been great if New Zealand had won. They love the Cup, they have a lot of respect for its tradition."
The chances of Alinghi racing in the series are vanishing by the day, with room for only one more team, and with Alinghi declining an invitation unless Team New Zealand drops its legal action.
Trouble seems unbothered about whether the Cup-holders make it. More riveting for him is the spectacle of seeing Coutts and Dean Barker back racing on the harbour.
"Imagine - we could have the final of the series with Dean Barker and Russell Coutts on the same water as 2003."
