The French, Americans, Italians and Swiss will have the final chance to suss out Team New Zealand's sailing secrets before the 2000 America's Cup.
And in the true Cup tradition, it is all above board.
Four challengers -- Yaka France, America True, Prada and Fast 2000 -- will battle amongthemselves to race the defender in the mini-America's Cup on the Waitemata Harbour next March.
It will be the final dress rehearsal for the Cup regatta proper, which kicks off seven months later.
It will probably be the final appearance of the black and white boats, the 1992 yachts which have given so much to New Zealand's Cup efforts.
The date of the Road to the America's Cup regatta has been changed from April to suit the challengers.
The Italians, Swiss and Dawn Riley's Americans are testing their own boats on the Hauraki Gulf this summer, but they were planning to pack up and leave in March.
There was no point in them sticking around after that. They wanted to try out the waters in February and March, the months that the Cup match will be raced in 2000.
So Team New Zealand will interrupt their trialling programme for the mini-cup.
Almost all of the 16 challengers were invited, but the series was restricted to four.
Yaka France, a team of mostly youth sailors, are making a return visit especially for the regatta. They made this year's challenger final, losing to Prada.
America True, a men's and women's crew including New Zealanders John Cutler and Leslie Egnot, were part of the first mini-cup regatta in 1997. It will be the first appearance of the Swiss team, who set up in Auckland next month.
The challengers will not use their own boats in the series. The identical black and white boats, used by New Zealand as trial-horses in the 1992 and 1995 Cup campaigns, will be sailed for the third year running.
The reason for not using boats like the 1995 Black Magics, says America's Cup 2000 director Tony Thomas, is to make it a crew contest.
The four challengers will race each other in a series of round-robins before holding a final to determine Team New Zealand's opponent. The match final will be the best-of-nine on March 6-7.
