KEY POINTS:
With what organisers describe as the "finest collection of competition sailors ever assembled" in Auckland this month for the Louis Vuitton Pacfic Series, the regatta has provided the opportunity to see some of the all-time yachting greats competing in our own back yard.
Among the 10 America's Cup syndicates competing in the new Louis Vuitton series are some of the most successful Cup sailors in the event's 158-year history.
Here, we take a look at some of the legends to have graced the sport throughout America's Cup history.
1: Sir Peter Blake
A patriotic choice for No 1, Sir Peter Blake is the people's champion of the America's Cup.
He was one of the key driving forces behind Team New Zealand winning, and then retaining the America's Cup in 1995 and 2000. Yet there is no doubt that for Sir Peter, ocean racing held the most attraction.
He competed in five Whitbread Round the World Races. In 1994, he set a world record, sailing non-stop around the world in the catamaran Enza New Zealand to win the Jules Verne Trophy.
He loved the classic challenge of man against the elements, the test of seamanship and endurance that goes with major ocean passages.
Although Sir Peter recognised the skill and commitment involved with the America's Cup, he disliked the politics and the constant battles over rules and interpretation and was therefore reluctant to become involved in the Cup games.
But despite his initial reticence, he was to become one of the central figures in helping Team New Zealand lift the Auld Mug.
He had led New Zealand's 1992 America's Cup Challenge, rising to the challenger finals with NZL 20.
But after Sir Michael Fay and David Richwhite bowed out of any involvement with the America's Cup after three failed attempts, Blake mortgaged his home in England to meet the US$75,000 entry fee for the 1995 event.
Blake was drawn not only to the enormity of the challenge, but also to the prestige and recognition New Zealand would gain if a Kiwi team could win it.
His faith in the team proved well founded. On Sunday May 14, 1995, Team New Zealand's NZL-32 took the final gun to trounce the American defender by 5-0, and so the term "blackwash" was coined.
It was a huge achievement, but it created an even greater challenge: holding on to it. New Zealand would have to defend the trophy and no country outside of the US had ever managed that before.
While the challengers did battle throughout the Millennium Summer, Team New Zealand were engaged in a relentless regime of training, testing and development. This meticulous planning on Sir Peter's behalf ensured that by the time the eventual challenger - Italy's Prada team - was found, Team New Zealand were ready to take them on.
Once again, the New Zealand superiority was overwhelming and the Italian challenge was despatched with a 5-0 scoreline.
>>Team NZ campaign commercial, 1995
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2: Harold Vanderbilt
A member of the prominent United States Vanderbilt family, Harold Vanderbilt successfully defended the America's Cup three times, the first of which coming in 1930 when he rebuffed Sir Thomas Lipton's fifth and final attempt at winning the prestigious event.
After his 1930 win in the J-class yacht Enterprise, Vanderbilt was featured on the cover of Time magazine.
In 1934 he faced a dangerous challenger in Endeavour, with the British boat winning the first two races. However Vanderbilt came back in his yacht Rainbow to win three races in a row and defend the Cup.
In 1937 Vanderbilt defended the Cup a third time in Ranger, the last of the J-class yachts to defend the Cup. Vanderbilt's wife, Gertrude, was also a very astute sailor, and became the first female to compete as a fully fledged team member in an America's Cup yacht race.
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3: Russell Coutts
The most successful America's Cup skipper of all time, Coutts is undefeated in Cup matches with 14 wins and no losses.
Coutts became the second foreign skipper to win the America's Cup when he led Team New Zealand's Black Magic to an overwhelming five straight victories over Team Dennis Conner in the 1995 finals.
He successfully defended the Cup in 2000 with Team New Zealand, but quickly went from hero to villain when after the defence Coutts defected to Alinghi. As skipper of the Swiss syndicate, Coutts defeated his former team in the 2003 Cup match.
Coutts, who now sails for Larry Ellison's BMWOracle Racing, could have established an even more imposing record in the America's Cup had he taken part in the last event in Valencia in 2007. The Kiwi sailor was prevented from competing in the event after being axed from Alinghi following a falling out with owner Ernesto Bertarelli.
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4: John Bertrand
For over a century, 24 challengers had tried and failed to wrest the America's Cup from the New York Yacht Club. In 1983, John Bertrand of Australia finally did it.
Bertrand skippered Australia II to a 4-3 victory over Dennis Conner's Liberty, ending 132 years of American supremacy. The win provided one of those great moments of sporting symmetry.
Bertrand is the great grandson of Thomas Pearkes, the English master engineer who prepared the challenging America's Cup yachts for Sir Thomas Lipton, who tried and failed five times to win the America's Cup.
You could say Bertrand had a score to settle.
He did it magnificently on September 26, 1983 when he won the seventh race against Liberty to take the America's Cup to Australia. There had never been a seventh or even a sixth race in the history of America's Cup racing.
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5: Olin J. Stephens II
Olin J. Stephens, who passed away late last year at the age of 100, is regarded as the premier yacht designer of the 20th century.
Stephens is credited with revolutionising the sport of yacht racing and together with Nat Herreshoff shares the record of designing six America's Cup defenders. He assisted on the J-Boats of the late 1930s, including Ranger, which won the America's Cup in 1937.
In addition, he designed six 12-metre defenders which made up all the defenders that won the America's Cup from 1958 with Columbia to 1980 with Freedom, with the exception of Weatherly in 1962.
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6: Dennis Conner
It is a case of two firsts for Dennis Conner: first to lose the Cup, first to win it back. He lost the Cup in 1983 with Liberty, and regained it on Stars & Stripes in 1987.
Conner is also the only four time skipper in America's Cup history, with Freedom in 1980, Liberty in 1983, and Stars & Stripes in 1987 and his catamaran called Stars & Stripes in 1988.
For New Zealanders, it was the controversy of the 1988 "Big Boat Challenge" that Conner is perhaps most well known for. In a similar situation to the current legal issues that plague the America's Cup today, Sir Michael Fay challenged Conner over the rules of the event, and the New York courts ordered a one on one showdown on the water.
Fay worked with designer Bruce Farr and Tom Schnackenberg to build a gigantic 36.57m monohull called KZ1, and was said to be the fastest monohull keelboat in the world at the time.
However, Conner exploited the regulations to the fullest extent and built a catamaran, and has been known to Kiwis as "Dirty Dennis" ever since.
Conner beat KZ1 easily in every race, although Fay tried unsuccessfully to outlaw Conner's catamaran in court.
>>Paul Holmes interviews Dennis Conner (Warning: Contains swearing)
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7: Brad Butterworth
It is fair to say Brad Butterworth lost a great deal of Kiwi admirers the day he turned his back on Team New Zealand to join Swiss syndicate Alinghi.
But even the most ardent of Team NZ supporters will still grudgingly accept Butterworth has established himself as one of the great America's Cup sailors of all time.
In the Cup's long history, no other afterguard member has won so many races in succession as Butterworth. As tactician aboard three winning boats (Team New Zealand in 1995 and 2000 and Alinghi in 2003), and as skipper of Alinghi in 2007, Butterworth set a Cup record with 16 consecutive America's Cup race victories.
Once described as the "grandmaster in the game of maritime chess", Butterworth's achievements in the sport are likely to go unmatched for some time.
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8: Sir Thomas Lipton
Despite trying - and failing - to win the America's Cup five times, Sir Thomas Lipton is still hailed as one of the true heroes in the sport.
Sir Thomas competed in a very different era, when the regatta was a friendly challenge between countries to prove who had the best sailing vessels and the finest sailors. It was a time when sportsmanship and gentlemanly conduct were deemed just as important as sailing ability and Sir Thomas became loved and respected for his sportsmanship as, one by one, all five of his Shamrocks were defeated.
His final challenge came in 1930 with Shamrock V, which lost in four straight races to Enterprise, skippered by Harold Vanderbilt, of the very wealthy railroad family. Vanderbilt summed up the feelings of the American public when, after the last race, he said: "Uppermost in our minds is a feeling of sympathy for that grand old sportsman, Sir Thomas Lipton, with whom our relations have been so pleasant.
"This is perhaps his last attempt to lift the America's Cup.
"The ambition of a lifetime, to achieve which he has spent millions, is perhaps never to be realised. It has been our duty to shut the door in his face.
"In defeat lies the test of true sportsmanship, and he has proved to be a wonderful sportsman, quite the finest it has ever been our good fortune to race against."
Although he was never able to win the Cup, the American people presented Sir Thomas with a gold cup in honour of his great sportsmanship.
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9: Bruno Trouble
An accomplished sailor in his own right, flamboyant Frenchman Bruno Trouble is perhaps better known as the mastermind behind the Louis Vuitton Challenger selection Series.
Trouble skippered two French challenges for the America's Cup led by Baron Marcel Bich in 1977 and 1980.
He also participated in a challenge led by Yves Rousset-Rouard.
An agent for change while still maintaining the Cup's tradition, where Trouble really made his mark was with the creation of the Louis Vuitton Cup series.
Recognising the opportunity to enhance the importance of the challenger selection series of the Cup and commercial sponsorship, he worked to create the Louis Vuitton challenger series in 1983, which continued until 2007.
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10: Ernesto Bertarelli
For better or for worse, Ernesto Bertarelli has changed the face of the America's Cup and in doing so has earned himself a place in the history books.
Just how kindly those books will look back at Bertarelli's contributions to the sport remains to be seen. With Bertarelli's influence, the America's Cup has now, more so than ever before, turned into a money game.
In 2000, Bertarelli founded the yachting syndicate Team Alinghi, which in 2003, representing the Societe Nautique de Geneve, won the Louis Vuitton Cup before beating Team New Zealand in Auckland to win the America's Cup.
It was the first time a team had won the coveted sailing trophy at its first attempt and the victory brought the Cup back to Europe for the first time since 1851.
The fact that Bertarelli did so with the help of Russell Coutts, Brad Butterworth and a handful of other Kiwi sailors poached from Team New Zealand will remain a sore point for sailing fans here.
But it cannot be denied that Bertarelli has created something special with Alinghi.
