The Manukau Yacht and Motor Boat Club has become the first New Zealand yacht club to be invited to compete in the Dennis Conner International Yacht Club Challenge in New York this August.
The regatta, in its second year, has attracted 15 crews from 13 countries to takeon the hosts, the Manhattan Sailing Club.
Races will be held in the shadow of the Statue of Liberty, with the start and finish lines at Conner's North Cove Marina, a few blocks from Wall St and downtown New York.
For the Manukau team there are some distant echoes of the Mercury Bay Yacht Club's Challenge for the America's Cup in the 90s - the small Manukau club, with around two dozen members, will be up against wealthy foreign clubs such as Ireland's Royal Cork Yacht Club, the Royal Bermuda Yacht Club and Royal "De Mass" Yacht of the Netherlands which have hundreds of members.
The Fremantle Sailing Club will represent Australia.
The races will be in five-person J/24 class yachts, to be supplied by the Manhattan Club, with crews using a different boat for each of the eight races.
This has put the Manukau crew at a slight disadvantage as they have not been able to track down a J/24 boat in New Zealand, while most of the other clubs in the regatta have fleets of J/24s.
Manukau commodore Brian Pil-kington dismissed this as being a problem.
"It won't be a disadvantage, cause we're Kiwis."
The club is arranging to practise on a Young 88 yacht, which is similar to the J/24 boat.
He said they would also need to practise raising and lowering spinnakers as it had been a few years since any of the Manukau team, which predominantly uses Hartley 16 trailer-sailers, had raced with spinnakers.
