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22
nd February 2021. It’s the morning after the night before, here in
Auckland, where the night before featured a few tears from the heavyweights of the sailing world as Sir Ben Ainslie’s Ineos Team UK were defeated in the Prada Cup final. Luna Rossa Prada Pirelli won through to challenge for the 36th America’s Cup and once more, we lost out on the opportunity to bring the “Auld Mug” home. The tears were understandable; it’s been
an intense three years’ worth of effort from the whole team: from the sailors, to the shore crew, to the designers, to the chefs, to Mel in accounts (Mel is a total legend by the way and ran the bar in hospitality for us too – which let’s face it, is a more important job). These guys and girls have been through so much together and it’s incredibly sad how swiftly their dreams were shattered following a few days of persistent light wind conditions. However, that’s sport for you – the Italians had the faster boat – and our team will bounce back and return all the stronger for it. Nick (Hutton), my husband, is a trimmer-
grinder for Ineos Team UK and sailed in every race. This was our third America’s Cup and the second with children in tow (Rafa, 5 and Rome, 2). Nick learned to sail at the Royal Dart Yacht Club in Kingswear many moons ago and I also grew up in the village; we still love to return for Regatta each year, when we can.
We left our home near Ashburton to travel to New Zealand at the end of September last year and initially spent two weeks in quarantine in a hotel near Rotorua, a town which sits on a huge lake and is famous for its geothermal activity. Sounds idyllic? It really wasn’t. As we pulled up to the hotel, Nick announced, “I came here for CJ’s stag do in 2012, it was the seediest we could find.” This pretty much set the tone for what was to follow; except this time around, they threw in a few uniformed army troops for good measure, whose job it was to monitor our every move. Still, credit where credit’s due, it’s certainly an approach that has kept Covid at bay for New Zealand and we soon settled into the swing of things. It’s amazing what entertainment a fenced off car park can provide when you spend fourteen days exploring it with a two year- old – on the upside, we perfected our pavement artist skills and on the downside, I fear there are a few poor Kiwi ants that will never recover. We made it out the other side – a little shell-shocked to be
released into the wide world, but ready to reap the benefits – and we moved into a house in St. Mary’s Bay, Auckland. We’ve been living here for nearly five months now and enjoying/enduring the ups and downs of the Americas’ Cup campaign rollercoaster. Britannia, the boat that the boys have been racing, was launched in early November and the competition kicked off in December with the Christmas Cup. Those early days were hugely challenging for the team as the boat had some major issues, primarily with its foils (which are the bits that stick into the water and carry the hull of the boat out of the water in order to minimise the drag and make it go faster…. theoretically); we didn’t just get beaten, we got annihilated. There was one day where Nick came home and said to me, “That was the most embarrassing day’s sailing of my life,” which pretty much summed up how we were all feeling at that point; it was painful to watch. Morale heading into Christmas was seriously low as a result and everyone knew they had to dig really deep if we were to get back on track heading into the first-round robin phase of the Prada
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