Calder at large: Clifftop seats for the main event

By PETER CALDER

They also serve who only stand and watch and they were watching in their hundreds from the clifftops of the East Coast Bays yesterday.

For the first time that anyone could remember, the vagaries of the unsettled wind on the America's Cup dictated a course which brought the yachts within a few hundred metres of the shore, just north of Milford and Castor Bay as they rounded the windward mark.

And in droves the locals deserted their darkened lounge rooms and sought out the best vantage points.

Kennedy Park, high over the water between Campbells Bay and Castor Bay, was Sunday-afternoon busy on a Tuesday, all floppy hats and folding chairs as the curious sought out spots among the young pohutukawa and broke out the binoculars.

Prada's misfortunes had allowed the black boat to open up a healthy lead and the watchers on the shore felt less need of the precise computerised tracking offered by the television coverage. Unhitched from technology, the spectacle gained in breadth and sparkle.

The sails, silhouettes on the horizon when seen from beach level, were now attached to big boats, slicing through the blue-black water under the slopes of Rangitoto.

"It's a bit of a foregone conclusion," said Don Fowler of Milford, "so I thought I'd come down and have a look. You get a sense of the atmosphere here and see the general spectacle."

Telecom contractors Stu Whalen and Jeff Hearn brought their sandwiches to the cliff edge for a late lunch with a view.

"We've had a very stressful morning," Mr Whalen laughed. "We thought we'd come out for a look. I'm amazed at how many boats there are."

Seen from this natural grandstand, the course boundary was plainly outlined by the bobbing spectator craft.

If interpreting the movements of the big boats was difficult as they beat upwind, there was no mistaking the difference between them as they rounded the top mark and the spinnakers suddenly blossomed, round and fat, for the long slide.

At Campbells Bay Primary School, high on a hill, a row of earnest faces at an upstairs window suggested not much work was getting done. But year six teacher Nadine Williamson was surrendering to the inevitable with a good grace.

"I must have one of the better views," she admitted, gazing on the spectacle unfolding below her window.

"It can be a bit tough trying to teach something but they will never get a chance like this again."

Further along the clifftop, where Judith McWilliams stood entranced at the end of her section, the boats were as close as she had seen them. Her husband Ross, was out on the course aboard Whichaway, which provides prestart weather and wind information to Team New Zealand.

She plans to join him on the course again, but yesterday was a good one to choose to stay at home.

As Mrs McWilliams contemplated the end of a regatta now more than five months old she spoke for many in the City of Sails.

"I don't know," she said, "what we're going to do when the racing is finished."