Oracle's success in reaching the Louis Vuitton Cup final can be traced back to one day during the second round robin.
It was then that Chris Dickson was introduced as helmsman, having been on the sidelines up until that stage.
Having begun the regatta with a 42s win over defending cup champions Prada in their first race and been rated as one of the fancied teams, certainly to reach the semifinals, Larry Ellison's syndicate had been scratchy on the water; good one day, average the next.
At one point it looked a real chance they could miss a semifinal place. Something had to be done.
And from the time the singleminded Dickson took over, so Oracle's fortunes swung.
They went unbeaten through their next 11 races and by the time of the semifinals had been transformed into a distinctly strong outfit.
Having already beaten Alinghi in the second round robin, they came up against them in the semifinal and were soundly beaten.
That meant beating OneWorld in the semifinal repechage, which they did just as easily, as the Seattle syndicate went rapidly off the boil, embroiled in off-water dramas.
The Oracle syndicate was born in May 2000, having acquired the assets of the AmericaOne and Aloha Racing syndicates from that year's regatta.
The team is loaded with quality sailors, from Dickson and starting box master Peter Holmberg, the reigning Swedish Match Tour champion, to New Zealander John Cutler, veteran of three cup campaigns and with class designer Bruce Farr in the back office.
Inevitably, much of the focus will be on the personal confrontation - such as it can be sitting on two large yachts with 15 other pairs of hands pulling their weight - between Dickson and Coutts.
Like Coutts, Dickson, who lives on the North Shore, can probably reel off the key issues about sailing on the Hauraki Gulf in his sleep.
For Oracle, the trick now is to discover if in the break since the semifinal repechage they have picked up their game sufficiently to trouble the highly tuned and in-form Swiss syndicate.
If they have, the prospects are for a decent ding-dong battle. If not ...
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