First published in the Daily Maverick 168 weekly newspaper.

Half a heel on a pedestrian crossing is all it takes to stop traffic in Devonport, the cute-as-a-puppy village on Auckland’s north shore that makes a perfect vantage point for watching yacht racing.

Something far smaller has halted New Zealand’s biggest city in its tracks this week, and with that taken the wind out of the sails of the America’s Cup, which was to have started there today.

On a bright afternoon in March 2012, a visit to Devonport to see the start of a leg of the Volvo Ocean Race allowed the chance to take pictures of some of the hamlet’s quaint buildings.

One opportunity required a step backward. The unhurried photographer fired off several attempts to frame his shot just so. When he finally lowered his phone from his face, he looked around to see at least 20 cars lined up behind him, patiently waiting for him to lift the half of his heel that had strayed on to the pedestrian crossing while he was playing the poor person’s Henri Cartier-Bresson. All the while, there had been not a hoot of protest.

Nine years on, attitudes have changed. Aucklanders are angry at a seven-day lockdown imposed from 6am on 28 February, two weeks after three days of restrictions, when two cases of Covid-19 were discovered.

Only essential shopping and work is allowed. “Our two-hour journey home took nine hours,” a reader wrote to the New Zealand Herald. “It was 26º … I wonder if Jacinda [Ardern, New Zealand’s prime minister] thinks it is OK to be in a car for that long with small children and little food or liquid?”

Ardern has decided that you won’t see anything as unessential as a racing yacht on Auckland’s waterways today.

Usually they would be afroth with activity: 12 minutes on the ferry from the CBD to Devonport, 40 to the vineyards of Waiheke Island, where the world and their beloveds are married weekend in, weekend out. Their guests, as well dressed as they are oiled, wobble into raucous conga lines on the night’s last boat home. 

Flying fish

That shouldn’t be tried on Te Rehutai or Luna Rossa, the boats in which crews representing the Royal New Zealand Yacht Squadron and Circolo della Vela Sicilia will contest the 36th edition of the America’s Cup.

They aren’t birds, and neither are they planes. But they fly with what looks like the greatest of ease, and with the aid of sleek, wing-like hydrofoils mounted on either side. Along with the rudder, the foils are usually the only parts of the boat touching the ocean beneath.

Essentially, they prop the keelless monohull in the air and allow it to be propelled forward with almost no drag. The foils also stop the yacht from capsizing as it tacks or jibes – sailing-speak for manoeuvring left or right – at ever more outrageous speeds.

To see this vessel, called an AC75 – short for America’s Cup 75-foot – glide a metre or so above the wet stuff at close to 100km/h is to see human ingenuity at its most genius. And at its most pointlessly wasteful.

Each boat can cost up to US$10-million to build. The crews are allowed two each. Luna Rossa took 90 artisans at the top of their assorted crafts 78,000 hours to construct.

Then there’s the race’s entrance fee, which is US$2-million this year. And what it takes to pay the small army of specialists required to keep everything, well, shipshape. Larry Ellison, the Bronx-born software billionaire, reportedly spent US$300-million defending his team’s title in 2013.

Viewed in that light, the America’s Cup is a criminal squandering of money and expertise. On top of that, it’s fuelled more by the spinnaker-sized egos of the skippers than the wind itself.

And it isn’t any less riveting and spectacular for all that, which will doubtless be obvious even to the uninitiated once Ardern eases regulations enough for the event to start — on 10 March at the earliest.

Thirteen races will be held across 16 days in one of five designated areas near Auckland’s shores. The victor will be the crew whose boat wins more of those races than their opponents.

All protocols observed

A new set of rules – called the protocol – is agreed before each staging of the race every four years, more or less.

The holders earn the right to host the event, and they have a head start on deciding what will be in the protocol.

Controversies over designs and materials rage before, and sometimes after, it is decided. The challengers are decided in a series of preliminary events, two of which, in Sardinia and Portsmouth, were cancelled last year because of Covid-19.

The America’s Cup is a curious amalgam of the ultramodern and the archaic. It was given its name after 16 boats raced a 98km course around the Isle of Wight on August 22 1851 in what had been billed as the inaugural Royal Yacht Squadron £100 Cup.

A 30m schooner, purpose-built by a syndicate of six New York businessmen, finished eight minutes before anyone else.

Its name? America.

Disappointed at that, Queen Victoria, who was at the finish line, reportedly asked who was second. Came the reply: “Ah, your majesty, there is no second.”

She would be aghast to learn that, 170 years on, a British crew has yet to capture the Cup.

You have to wonder what the famously frumpy monarch would have made of Grant Dalton, the New Zealand team manager, telling his troops in the afterglow of their triumph in Bermuda in 2017: “Hey guys, just … fuck. Amazing, just amazing. Right. That’s the speech.” 

New Zealand’s modern dominance

It seems you can take the America’s Cup out of New Zealand, but you almost can’t take New Zealanders out of the America’s Cup. They first featured in 1988, when they lost to the Stars and Stripes in San Diego — where they returned in 1995 to claim the title for the first time.

They defended successfully in 2000 but three years later lost to the Swiss boat Alinghi — who beat them again in Valencia in 2007.

They went down to Ellison’s Oracle in San Francisco in 2013 – after being 8-1 ahead – before reclaiming the trophy from them in Bermuda four years ago.

Jimmy Spithill, an Australian, was the winning skipper with Oracle in 2010, and he opposed the New Zealanders in 2013 and 2017. He’s back this year, but, in a revolutionary move, Spithill will share the Italian helm with Francesco Bruni: Spithill will steer the starboard side and Bruni the port side.

The young Te Rehutai crew is led by Pete Burling, who guided the Kiwis to glory in 2017 and epitomises the reckless daring of foil racing. Boat International, a respected sailing website, calls Burling “wildly gifted”.

You could call the America’s Cup a giant game of chess on water, or wind-powered Test cricket, or an obscenely expensive street fight. But, whatever the analogy, we should know by now that it is anything but pedestrian. DM168

This story first appeared in our weekly Daily Maverick 168 newspaper which is available for free to Pick n Pay Smart Shoppers at these Pick n Pay stores.