"He looks like he is about to go to sleep," the other replied.
Burling's relaxed state in the build-up to this America's Cup had been a talking point around the village.
The sailing wunderkind has 13 world championship titles to his name, but the America's Cup brings a whole new kind of pressure, niggle and distractions to deal with.
Throughout the current Cup cycle there has been a palpable tension between Team NZ and the rest of the teams, with the Kiwi syndicate finding themselves on the other side of the divide on most of the key issues facing the event. That tension has escalated over the past couple of weeks.
Behind the scenes of the pristine race village in Bermuda's Royal Naval Dockyard there has been friction over measurement committee rulings, last minute amendments to the rules and general petty politics that tend to rear its head in the America's Cup.
Burling has sailed on seemingly blithely unaware. He comes to the Cup game with no baggage, and has found his happy place hurtling around the Great Sound at great speed.
That's not to say we haven't seen some wobbles from Burling over the early days of racing - the most glaring of which was a tactical error in Sunday's meeting with Oracle, in which the Kiwi boat were rolled at the final top gate after Spithill created an overlap heading into the mark rounding.
Today it was Team New Zealand's starts that let them down, with Team Japan skipper Dean Barker, the man Burling effectively deposed at the helm of the Kiwi boat, getting the jump on his former team. Later, in their second race with Ben Ainslie Racing, Team NZ copped a penalty for entering the start box early.
In both races the team recovered impressively, showing strong decision-making around the track to pull off come from behind wins.
Rather than being concerned by these early slip-ups, Burling is relaxed. He is thriving on the challenge of learning how to master the game.
