KEY POINTS:
Grant Dalton is nothing if not forthright.
On the day that Britain's Ben Ainslie was given the helm for one of the pre-round-robin fleet races, Dalton was pottering about on the back of the boat on the way out to the race course when he turned round and
said: "You know, you people have got it absolutely wrong."
By "you people" he meant the Pommie press and the thing they were wrong about was the possibility of Ainslie replacing Dean Barker at the the helm of New Zealand's America's Cup challenge.
"There is no way that is going to happen," he said, then slightly modifying the statement by adding: "Of course, it's Dean's decision. He would decide. But it isn't going to happen."
For Ainslie, who in three Olympics has won a silver followed by two golds, tomorrow will be sheer purgatory.
He will take the B boat as the deep horns which accompany all of Team New Zealand's docking-out ceremonies boom over an America's Cup harbour largely shut and shuttered as 10 of the 12 teams have been knocked out.
He will then run a tune-up routine alongside the race boat before being told "that's enough" and go back to the compound to watch the opening race on television.
"I hate watching yacht racing on television," he says.
But the positives for a man who just wants to race, race, and race some more have far outweighed the negatives in the four years he has worked with the team, travelled with the team, grown with the team and developed from a hugely talented singlehanded dinghy sailor into a man who can run one of the most complex big racing yachts in the world.
"It's been an amazing ride to see the state everything was in after 2003, finding the money, getting a team together and seeing how the thing has developed."
After a disappointing flirtation with the Seattle-based OneWorld in 2000, in which months were spent gaining United States residency and then he was sent up the mast to monitor the wind patterns during three months of sailing in Auckland, Ainslie is a much happier man.
Talk to one of Team New Zealand's main coaches - Olympic silver medallist Rod Davis. The man from California cannot heap enough praise on someone who, apart from being outrageously talented, has shown an ability to learn, in one of the hardest of schools, at an amazing rate.
There has been no feather-bedding. That would not be the Kiwi way, but the welcome he was given by both New Zealand and the team is acknowledged by Ainslie.
In return, he has provided exactly the kind of foil which is needed from a programme of in-house racing designed to expose weakness, find solutions and not just mend but add strength.
He understands that one of the main spurs has been the sense of righting the wrongs of 2003.
"It has rubbed off on people like myself," he says.
"It gives you extra oomph to get out of bed in the morning and do the extra hour of testing. We go hammer and tongs at each other. It's my one and only opportunity to race in cup boats. Everyone takes it really seriously. You dearly want to beat them and so help the development of the team."
As far as his own performance is concerned, Ainslie is critical of his early days but accepted the internal standard that, "You either run with it and survive or you don't and you're history".
Part of the price he has paid has been to do little Finn sailing ahead of the 2008 Games in China.
He went there for a pre-Olympic regatta last year, having spent only a few days in training and zapped the best in the world but "I'm not sure if I can repeat that trick".
Now he thinks he can say that the B boat "has done a pretty good job" and knows that, were the mythical bus to knock down Barker during the cup, he would have to step up to the plate.
"It's quite hard to keep up that level of readiness when you also have to switch off," he says.
But he wants to make it clear that he is in no way bitter about not being able to race.
"I always knew what was going to happen. It's not a surprise."
And, now he is a fully fledged, if part-time Kiwi, who has won the considerable respect of such a mature Kiwi team, he can say he enjoyed it. Many in Britain expect him to be first choice for the Origin team that says it will challenge next time, but would he want to sail for Team New Zealand again?
"If Dean decided to move on and if Grant offered me the opportunity, I would jump at it," he answers without hesitation.
The Pommie press might have something to say about that, too.
The tune-up guys
From New Zealand's debut in the America's Cup, the B-boat helmsman have been an integral part of the campaigns.
Chris Dickson skippered KZ7 all the way to the Louis Vuitton final in 1987 but it was David Barnes in KZ3 that kept the fledgling challenge honest.
In 1992 Rod Davis, now Team New Zealand coach, had the wheel of NZL20 which was leading Il Moro di Venezia 4-1 in the challenger final. But the bloke keeping that crew firing was one Russell Coutts.
Coutts was almost unbeatable onboard NZL32 in 1995. The boat that chased them round had American Ed Baird, likely to be Alinghi helmsman on Sunday, at the wheel.
The cup defence of 2000 had Murray Jones, then Dean Barker on the B boat and chasing Coutts. Barker sailed the fifth race of the cup match against Prada in the 5-0 clean sweep.
* Stuart Alexander is a yachting correspondent for the Independent.
