Where it all started for me:The Americas Cup

I'm not sure where my interest in sailing came from, though a Psychologist might make something of the fact that my mother ordered me to get back out and sail my big brothers P Class in gusty wind that frightened me when I was 12 , or, if I didnt, she would take me straight home and that would be the end of sailing for me. Well I didnt, she did and it was! Well at least for the next 40 years.

But like it was for many Kiwis, it was the Americas Cup that really got me going, though for most their interest in the AC didnt start till Michael Faye mounted the first Kiwi challenge for the cup in 1986. I am not sure how it came about but I had been following the Americas Cup even before Australia II took it off the New York Yacht Club in 1983. That year was my final year at Medical School and for the last three months of my formal medical education I went to work in a tiny polynesian Island called Niue for three months. I desperately tried to make my little radio tune in to Radio New Zealands pacific broadcasts to find out what was happening, but it wasnt until the Time magazine arrived on the island a few weeks after it was all over that I read about that Ben Lexcens winged keel and that unbelievable victory.

Three years later I was working as a GP when AC fever began to sweep New Zealand as the first ever Kiwi challenge for the Cup was mounted with KZ7, the "plastic fantastic" 12 metre yacht, and Chris Dickson its Skipper. In the Finals of the Challenger series, Dickson was knocked out by Mr Americas Cup, Dennis Connor, the American skipper who lost the Cup to the Australians, but who then went on to win it back from them. All Kiwis know who Dennis is - a man we loved to hate, especially after he said things about the Kiwi challenge like "Why would you build a plastic yacht unless you wanted to cheat?" At that time all other AC boats were aluminuim but nowdays theyre all "Plastic" - so Kiwi ingenuity was just showing the way. At the end of the series it seemed all of New Zealand was Cup mad, and thereafter the madness just grew until the Cup was won in 1995 by Peter Blake, Russell Couts and "Black Magic". In 2000 Team New Zealand succesfully defended the Cup against several American Syndicates, including Dennis Connors "Stars and Stripes"as well as the French. Swedish and other eurpoean teams.

Sadly Team New Zealand lost the Cup in 2003, sailing a boat that just wasnt up to it - Kiwi ingenuity got the better of them, but remarkably in 2007 in Valencia they regrouped and came oh so close to winning the Cup back from the Swiss. That last race against Alinghi, when TNZ lost by ONE second must rate as the greatest AC Match race of all time!

Throughout all these years I constantly scoured newspapers, magazines and the Net for every detail I could about the Cup. Team NZ had a compound in downtown Auckland while I was living there, and I would often drive there after work, after everyone had already gone and the security fences were all locked up, and I would peer through cracks in the gate to get the tiniest glimpse of the latest boat. When I turned 50 I was given a ticket for a daysail on an old AC boat on Sydney Harbour and when I stepped aboard I was so excited and emotional I almost burst into tears. I guess you could call me an Americas Cup "Tragic".

But here I was at 50, and though I knew just about everything there was to know about the Cup, and though I loved everything about the sea and about sailing, I didnt know the first thing about how to actually sail a boat. And thats what struck me like a thuinderbolt out of the Blue one day in 2006. "This is crazy" I thought " I'm going to have to do something about it"