KEY POINTS:
If all goes to a plan announced by Team New Zealand this week, Auckland will see America's Cup yachts match-racing on the Waitemata this summer.
With the next main event still becalmed in court, Team NZ have offered a contest in which all syndicates would use the two boats the New Zealanders took to Valencia last year and used to win the Louis Vuitton Cup.
With slight modifications to equalise the boats as precisely as possible, the series will be a crewing contest only, without the financial and design dimensions of the America's Cup.
Sponsored by Louis Vuitton, no longer the name financier of the Cup's challenger series, the regatta should be a valuable crewing exercise for the syndicates and a welcome spectacle for Auckland.
The city needs a new sailing event and this one offers America's Cup craft match-racing inside the harbour where it would be seen at closer quarters than during the defences in the Hauraki Gulf.
Several syndicates that competed at Valencia have indicated they will attend, needing only to bring a branded spinnaker.
The series has been organised as a one-off event mainly to fill the void while Alinghi and BMW Oracle circle each other in court.
But if the "Pacific Series" proves popular with Auckland there seems no reason it could not become a regular spin-off of the America's Cup.
A crewing-contest in these magnificent yachts would be fitting for New Zealand, which may lack the financial resources to hold the main event again but still supplies the core of the most competitive crews.
They already come back here for match races in smaller classes. To see them in America's Cup mode would be a treat the city could embrace and build into an event to enliven many a summer.
