Queen's Birthday Honours: Bruno Trouble

By SUZANNE McFADDEN

Bruno Trouble was afloat in the South Pacific when he got the call to become an honorary officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit.

The exuberant Frenchman, who brought zing to the America's Cup in Auckland, took the satellite phone call on his New Zealand-built yacht Wanaka as he cruised towards Tonga with his wife and two sons.

"We were in the middle of nowhere when the New Zealand Government asked if I would accept this special honour," said Trouble, Louis Vuitton's representative in the America's Cup for the past 20 years. "I said 'Yes, great!'

"It will be a lasting memory of my wonderful years in New Zealand, our second country. We have to go home to Paris next month, and we are sad about that - in fact, my sons are furious. None of us wants to leave."

Trouble received the Queen's Birthday honour for enhancing relations between New Zealand and France, yet he would like to think it was more for promoting his second country around the world through the Louis Vuitton America's Cup media centre he ran.

"From what the Prime Minister told me regularly during the America's Cup, she was extremely pleased with the coverage New Zealand was getting. I would like to think I was accepting this on behalf of Louis Vuitton, not just me."

Moored in Fiji's Musket Cove yesterday, the Trouble family are savouring their South Pacific holiday away from the America's Cup.

Until holders Alinghi decide where and when the next regatta will be sailed, Trouble's cup career is on hold. Right now, there is no guarantee that Louis Vuitton will be involved in the next event.

But Trouble will return to New Zealand - he is keeping his yacht here and plans to visit twice a year.

This is not Trouble's only honour this year. After the America's Cup, he returned home to receive la Legion d'Honneur (the Legion of Honour) for his services to sailing during a career which included two Olympics, three America's Cups and a handful of world titles.