Peter Blake and Russell Coutts hold up the Auld Mug. Photo / Photosport
OPINON:
How strange is it that so many Kiwis, including me, wouldn't know a luff from a lanyard, but still love the America's Cup?
Thanks to a succession of media bosses who thought I was joking when I said I had zero knowledge of yachting I was sent to Fremantle for two weeks to watch the last challenger round robin in the '86-87 Cup off the West Australian coast, flown to Auckland from Christchurch to see the 2000 Cup, and even had the honour of sailing with Sir Peter Blake, the legend who masterminded the 1995 victory that brought the Cup to New Zealand.
I can still remember the first words Blake said to me: "If you'd get your arse out of the way I might be able to see the depth finder and we might not run aground."
The offer to interview Blake by going on a gentle cruise from Auckland to Whangarei on Lion New Zealand, a yacht he was about to skipper in the '85-86 round the world race, seemed a great idea to my employers of the time.
A friend, Simon Gundry, had crewed for Blake on many occasions and assured me that Blake was not only a legend, but good company too.
What Simon hadn't factored in was how, in a campaign driven by the dark art of promotion, Blake had been obliged to sail Lion New Zealand all over the country, and allow, for a gold coin donation, members of the public to tramp all over the boat. By the last leg of the trip, to Whangarei, Blake was at the end of his tether. For him, it was clear, the exercise had started to feel like turning his pride and joy into something akin to a petting zoo.
So it was that, cowering aft with a handful of corporate guests as we headed out of Auckland harbour, past North Head, I was inadvertently blocking his view of the depth finder.
(A week later we met again in Auckland, and thankfully the man Gundry had eulogised emerged; informative, frank, and often very funny.)
What few would have predicted was that the flurry of interest that kicked up every time round the world yachts came to Auckland would be just a mild zephyr compared to the tsunami of Kiwi enthusiasm triggered when Michael Fay launched a challenge for the America's Cup.
As it was in '86, that buzz is still largely created by television coverage, now at a stage where we can all hear Jimmy Spithill swearing during a scarily tight cross, or Sir Ben Ainslie telling his men to keep calm and carry on. It helps too that the short, sharp races of 2021 are so close to land you can watch some from Tamaki Drive.
The racing off Fremantle was 15km off shore in the Indian Ocean, so nobody could see them from the port. At first I was puzzled that the vast majority of a large international press pool of genuine yachting journalists watched the racing from the media centre in town, rather than in a launch provided by the organiser.
I clung tightly to the coattails of PJ Montgomery for scraps from his vast store of yachting knowledge. After a couple of days PJ, a purist who always headed out to sea to commentate, persuaded me to join him on the media boat.
On a TV screen you saw, even then, the cut and thrust, the tactics, the screeching rounding of buoys. Live at sea it was possibly the most boring sporting event I've ever seen. Even for the official media boat there were draconian restrictions on how close you could get to the course, so on the water two boats racing usually looked, even with the help of binoculars, like tiny dots on the horizon, moving at a barely glacial pace.
Nearly two decades later, when Russell Coutts and Brad Butterworth led New Zealand to victory in San Diego, I casually mentioned in a column that compared to the excitement of watching the San Diego triumph ("The America's Cup is now New Zealand's Cup," as PJ exuberantly phrased it) the live experience in Fremantle had made "watching paint dry seem thrilling".
A week or so after the final race in 1995 a massive crowd had flocked to Cathedral Square in Christchurch for the Team New Zealand victory parade. Simon Barnett and I were about to compère the mayoral welcome on stage. Butterworth was in line to climb the stairs to the stage when he caught my eye.
And so it was that I can remember the first words Brad Butterworth said to me: "Hey you prick, do you still think yachting's boring?"
(Later that afternoon, at a local brewery, talking with him and Coutts on the neutral ground of a common interest in rugby, we sorted out the nuances of the words I'd written, and I discovered that, like Peter Blake, Butterworth had a bone dry, but very keen, sense of humour.)
On the chance that Butterworth might read this story, let me emphasise that what I'm about to say isn't in any way a criticism of the more traditional vessels that he and his teammates used to bring the Cup to, and then defend in, New Zealand. I swear that I leaped to my feet shouting at the screen with delight in 1995 when New Zealand crossed the line in the fifth race in San Deigo.
Technically those machines now on the Waitematā that fly out of the water at speeds well above 80km/h are yachts.
But the sheer craziness of the whole thing means most of the races we're seeing are to normal sailing what T20 is to test cricket, or MMA is to boxing.
The new-school America's Cup produces, for a sporting philistine like me, the sort of visceral buzz you'd usually associate with stock cars, if all the cars had jet engines, could barely balance on their wheels, and spent a lot of their time racing straight at each other at full speed, before missing a collision by inches. It's yachting, certainly not as we know it, but Lord, it's exciting.
Heading into the Cup racing?
• Give yourself plenty of time and think about catching a ferry, train or bus to watch the Cup.
• Make sure your AT HOP card is in your pocket. It's the best way to ride.
• Don't forget to scan QR codes with the NZ COVID Tracer app when on public transport and entering the America's Cup Village.
• For more ways to enjoy race day, visit at.govt.nz/americascup.
The move comes after Burling and Team New Zealand parted ways earlier this year.