KEY POINTS:
The America's Cup finally kicked into life this week.
There are yachting aficionados and sports nuts who will disagree and point out they have been captured by the nautical nuances for weeks, months, years. Fair play, to all you hearties.
In this landlubber's quarters though, Monday morning - when Team New Zealand surged to a 3-0 lead in the Louis Vuitton Cup - was the point at which to take an intense interest in events around Valencia. It was the moment that the 32nd America's Cup became interesting.
Why so?
Pure and simple, really.
Monday offered the first serious hope since TNZ bailed out - bucket and all - against Russell Coutts' Alinghi four years ago that the America's Cup might return to Auckland.
This column is being written without knowing what took place overnight in the fourth race of the best-of-nine challenger final series but, at the very least, it feels as though New Zealand is truly back in the America's Cup game.
The competition had such a haphazard feel until Monday. Yachting is such a mysterious business anyway. Yet suddenly, there was a solid order of favouritism and a sense that TNZ might have worked some real miracles in their planning.
It is presumptuous, for sure, to contemplate already that the cup might be on its way back.
But until that 3-0 lead was achieved, the competition in the Mediterranean waters was ethereal and the prospect of a TNZ victory still remote. And quite frankly, an America's Cup of Alinghi vs Luna Rossa would get a very wide berth at my place.
Back to the Louis Vuitton. Two-nil leads, as footballers know, are notoriously tricky affairs. They invite the leader to become cautious, and the chaser to throw off the shackles and find momentum. Three to nil in a first-to-five contest represents a long way back for the chaser though.
Had Luna Rossa scored the victory that seemed so possible given their fine start on Monday morning, the doubts would have set in.
Instead, what is being portrayed as a lucky wind break - although the impression is that New Zealand have the quicker boat in most conditions - sent Dean Barker and his crew surging to what looks an impregnable lead. "Watch out Alinghi," I heard someone say in this office.
This was the moment when a sports tournament found its feet, even if the drama came in hushed tones. The wee hours and yachting make strange bedfellows.
It had nothing, for instance, on what may have been the sunniest moment I can recall in New Zealand sport, when Dick Tayler won the 10,000 metres at the 1974 Commonwealth Games in Christchurch.
Tayler's hometown victory, an unlikely one, sparked one of the most successful sports festivals in history.
The way the race unfolded and Tayler's unadulterated joy, the innocent exuberance, spread a never-to-be-forgotten magic across the land. It helped, maybe, that colour television had just arrived in this country and even if those initial screens were blotchy, Tayler's victory promised a bright new sporting world.
Another pivotal occasion: the first rugby World Cup came alive when John Kirwan twisted his way through what seemed like the entire Italian team in the opening match at Eden Park.
Everyone will have their own favourite moments from the world of sports tournaments. In time, Team New Zealand's relatively undramatic mid-series victory in Valencia on Monday will fade. For now though, it feels highly significant.
What do we now have in store?
As for TNZ's prospects should they reach the final, who would know. Put together all the available data - secret jousts, expert predictions, non-expert predictions - and you'll be more confused than when you started.
But at least TNZ should be on the start line, which creates an obvious storyline.
Dean Barker was as a young man all at sea in 2003, a pupil taught a ruthless lesson by the master Coutts and without a strong team structure to fall back on as the crisis took hold.
Yet, boosted by Grant Dalton's faith, Barker now stands within sight of a comeback that might rate as the most momentous in New Zealand sporting history. He has ridden out the storm. If Barker succeeds, then who else has suffered such humiliation and returned to claim the object of his despair.
Thirty years ago, a far different character completed this very sort of America's Cup revival. The maverick Ted Turner has spent his life chasing adventure, money, power, women, broadcasting corporations, sports franchises, yachting trophies and plenty more with all the calm of a jack hammer. Ted Turner causes storms.
Turner had been humiliated in the 1974 American defender series, when he was dumped mid-stream for Denis Conner. But Turner returned in triumph in 1977, negotiating - or bulldozing - his way past all obstacles to claim the cup against Australia on a boat called Courageous in the most famous of comebacks.
Turner is regarded as the last of the amateur America's Cup-winning skippers, and these are very different times. But Monday morning was, for me, the first time it appeared that Barker was on track to get a similar shot at redemption.
Then there is Dalton, the mastermind who has done it all in this campaign from securing cheques to working below the decks.
Many believed the cup was gone forever, such was the nature of the 2003 defeat. Hell, there was the real prospect that New Zealand might not even get a challenge together this time.
New Zealand's reputation was in tatters. Remember the opening race in the final began with TNZ bailing water out of its boat with a bucket, a mast snapped in race four, and they slunk to a final defeat with a broken spinnaker pole. It was a shambles.
It's hardly surprising, given his remarkable campaign history, that Dalton righted the ship. It is still a tremendous achievement though. We mere mortals can only marvel at how someone can bring together this high-priced mix of man and technology, and still find the time and energy to stack sails.
In short, the meticulous and iron-willed Dalton has already put a base-level respect back into New Zealand's America's Cup sailing whatever might happen from here on. A cup victory, though, would put him in the highest hall of legend.
Yes, reading over this column, I'll admit it feels dangerously premature. But, with the embarrassment of 2003 in mind, the Louis Vuitton lead has produced an overwhelming urge to offer up hearty congratulations to Dalton, Barker and the whole crew. Good luck troops, if you need it.
