KEY POINTS:
At dawn every race day morning, Mary Grant goes in to work at the Royal New Zealand Yacht Squadron, ignoring the overnight fortunes of Team New Zealand.
She sleeps through the racing in Valencia and leaves her radio switched off on the drive into town. When she arrives at her office of more than 20 years, she blocks her ears so no one will tell her whether the team has won or lost.
"One morning, I stopped at the traffic lights and a car with a boom box pulled up alongside. Then the news blasted out so that I heard the result. It ruined it," she says.
"It's easy once you set your mind to not knowing. But you cantell by everyone's faces whether we've won or not."
She is the first to arrive and set up the special breakfast in the squadron's members' bar whenever a race has taken place in Valencia. Members in blazers and ties line up with young sailors in wet-weather gear to tuck into bacon and scrambled eggs as highlights of the race roll across the television screens high in the corners of the bar.
Beyond the TV sets, through the glass doors, is Rangitoto with its misty halo and the Hauraki Gulf where this racing once played out. The people here, at the home of Team New Zealand, are quietly confident the duelling will be back on those waters again.
These are the faithful - the supporters who have never given up hope that the Auld Mug will return to the glass case along the hall. While New Zealand's interest in the America's Cup mounts with every win Grant Dalton's crew notch up, squadron devotees have never doubted their team would get this far. The only surprise is the speed with which they have advanced.
There were mornings, in the early rounds of the Louis Vuitton Cup, where Mrs Grant was the only person at breakfast. But the numbers have been building steadily. Yesterday, when Team New Zealand notched up their fourth straight win over Luna Rossa with calculated precision, 40 people had gathered around the TV sets as the sun began to rise.
Most of the faithful had been up in the wee, small hours, watching the race live. "But they like to come here and relive it all over again," says squadron vice-commodore Scott Colebrook.
Logan Griffin, 12, a descendant of one of the squadron's renowned families, the Whitings, is transfixed by the battle on screen. His mother, Debbie Whiting, says he has the same absolute focus at the wheel of a boat.
His grandmother, 83-year-old Mollie Whiting, stays up all night - saying her "boys" can't do it without her cheering them on.
As NZL92 accelerates further away with every puff of breeze, gentle praise can be heard for "Dalts" and his boys gathering in the spinnaker sweetly and tacking without losing a second's speed. And when the boat crosses the finish line, first yet again, the early morning grazers break into hearty applause.
When the America's Cup match racing gets under way in little over a fortnight, they will be at the squadron en masse at midnight to watch the battle they have all been waiting for - against Alinghi - on a big screen in the main hall.
In true Team New Zealand fashion, any real show of jubilation will be reserved until then.
