'Bravos' fade to brave faces on support boat

By Peter Calder

The faces and the silences were long among Prada supporters on the Hauraki Gulf yesterday, but they are quick to remind you that Tuesday is another day.

As the sparkle wore off aboard one of the Italian supporters' craft, syndicate consultant Francesco Cattani, a veteran sailor himself, shrugged.

"Some are disappointed," he said. "Others know that yacht racing is like poker: you don't count your money till the game is over."

Two supporters' craft followed in the grey boat's wake on the course. The crew's families kept their feelings to themselves, enduring their second day of first-day nerves in luxurious isolation on a separate craft.

But aboard the chartered launch L'Affaire, a few dozen enthusiastic Italians kept their optimism up, lunching on pasta and regional cheeses as they waited for the start. The boat bounced in the swell while the passengers pounded the keys of cellphones, text-messaging or calling loved ones with the minutiae of weather and windspeed.

It was the small hours of Sunday in Italy and, the way the contingent here tell it, one in 10 Italians were on the edge of their seats at home.

"Are you kidding?" said one. "Millions are watching even though it's one or two in the morning. People talk about nothing else."

Luna Rossa's sharp start and early confidence prompted a flurry of bravos, but when she rounded the first mark 22 seconds astern of the black boat, the mood quickly became sombre.

The Italian Ambassador, Roberto Palmieri, scowled on the aft deck.

Up forward, Cino Ricci, who skippered Azzurra in the Italian challenge at Newport in 1983, was unequivocal.

"It's a bad day for us," he said, predicting certain defeat before the end of the third leg.

"Russell Coutts can control things very well and it is very fast, the New Zealand boat."

As the probable slowly became the inevitable, most of the watchers hunkered down in the cabin, staring gloomily at the animations on the TV screen.

A hardy handful stood on the foredeck, as if willing a miracle.

Yet as the gun sounded and Black Magic dropped her sail, they were all smiles, gracious in disappointment.

The skipper set a course for port, but Mr Cattani waved him on, taking us close enough to the grey boat to shower the disconsolate crew with more bravos.

"We need to cheer them up," he explained. "We have to go to them and cheer them not just when we win."

As we motored back they offered me high fives, handshakes and embraces as though it was somehow my achievement.

"You sailed well today - but we will get you next time." I tried not to look smug. The ambassador dozed.

On the dockside, the supporters formed five-deep ranks to hail the team home as the strains of Luna Rossa swelled. Klaxons, much of their gas expelled, wheezed bravely and I recalled Mr Ricci's explanation of yachting's popularity in his homeland. "It's not like soccer," he'd told me. "They are crazy for Luna Rossa because there is so much of her on TV. It's not the sailing. They like the idea of something hard to do."

The word he seems to be grasping for is "challenge." He knows, maybe better than anyone, that they've bitten off a big one here.