America's Cup: Lady Pippa Blake's lucky red socks

Lady Pippa Blake will be wearing her red socks as she cheers on Team New Zealand. New Zealand Herald photograph

Lady Pippa Blake will be wearing red socks as she sits "absolutely on the edge of my chair" willing Team New Zealand on to victory over the next couple of days.

Two-time America's Cup winner Sir Peter Blake's "lucky red socks", which Lady Pippa gave her late husband, became a talisman for his 1995 5-0 clean sweep in Black Magic.

Kiwis proudly wore the red socks and even hung them from car aerials here during the successful Cup challenge at San Diego.

Lady Pippa flew out of Auckland on Friday for her home in Emsworth, on the south coast of England after a week of being in New Zealand for the Sir Peter Blake Leadership Awards.

She watched Team New Zealand brush aside Oracle Team USA in the first four races last week, at the Waiheke Island home of daughter Sarah-Jane and son-in-law, NZ Sailing Trust head skipper Alistair Moore.

"I had to miss a couple of races to the Louis Vuitton (challenger series) finals as I was travelling here. So in fact by the time I arrived, I knew that they (Team NZ) were in... the Cup, so that was really exciting," Lady Pippa told the Herald on Sunday in an exclusive interview.

She was due back home in time to watch the next two days' Cup racing, starting this morning (NZT), with family and friends.

With New Zealand leading the first-to-seven final 3-0, when the Herald on Sunday spoke to Lady Pippa on Wednesday, she was "feeling confident" but as a veteran of many sailing campaigns she was aware "it's never over till the fat lady sings".

"I guess I have a quiet confidence but I'll be sitting absolutely on the edge of my chair at the weekend."

She did say however, she would celebrate a Cup victory with champagne.

Lady Pippa has been "very impressed" with the "young, extremely focused" Kiwi team, who were "keeping a low profile and just really getting on with the work".

"I'm full of admiration for the way they've been playing it," she said.

"And hopefully they bring the Cup back home to New Zealand. It would be wonderful... But I think... the thing is, slowly, slowly. I mean as we've seen from before, you've just got to take each race as it comes."

A win would be a tribute to "all the teams, all the guys and all the families" of past and present Kiwi campaigns, she said.

Watching the current team, which was "carrying on all sorts of values... which Peter stood for" in action, brought back memories of her late husband.

There was "a lot of poignancy and sadness still" but overriding that was the progression of a sporting phenomenon that Sir Peter was such an important part of building.

The national hero led New Zealand to America's Cup victory in 1995 and defended the trophy in 2000.

He was killed on a yacht by pirates in 2001, in the Amazon.

Lady Pippa, 63, and Sir Peter married in 1979. "Our honeymoon was sailing down from England to New Zealand."

The accomplished artist still gets out on the water herself. "I own a 11-foot dinghy called a scow, which I sail back in the UK."

Sarah-Jane, an artist and experimental theatre set designer, was also a "very keen sailor", she said. And son James, a natural history film cameraman, was about to be a part of an ocean race across the Atlantic.

Lady Pippa said Sir Peter would have been thrilled to watch the current Cup campaign, with its "huge advances in technology".

"I think he would have been revelling in it. I think he'd be amazed and awestruck."