KEY POINTS:
Russell Coutts is watching intently as Larry Ellison's superyacht gingerly picks its way past the Louis Vuitton Pacific Series yachts at the Viaduct Harbour.
He is grinning at the delicacy of the task - the 183-foot vessel, owned by the billionaire owner of the BMW Oracle syndicate, is tiptoeing past berthed yachts and other obstacles a little like an elephant scared of bee-stings might cross a field of daisies.
"Imagine the cost if you dinged that," says Coutts. "You'd have to haul it out of the water and it'd be a huge bill - even before you got to the cost of the other one," he adds, gesturing at another massive superyacht which has slipped into the shadow of Ellison's craft as it passes.
It's an interesting moment. Listen to the naysayers re Coutts and there is a refrain that he is more CEO than sailor these days; more interested in the money game than the game itself.
But it seems, from watching his face, that this is still a man compelled by matters sailing; with a competitive instinct; who still thinks about the sea as opposed to his BMW Oracle CEO title. He likes the challenge, it is clear, of threading something like the superyacht through the needle at the Viaduct.
He watches the Zenji with the intensity for which he is known - redolent of the day almost 25 years ago when an almost fiercely intense Coutts seemed about to lose his gold medal in the Finn class at the 1984 Olympic regatta at Long Beach, California.
He stood to be disqualified after his gear weighed in heavy but Coutts and the New Zealand yachting team argued for a re-weigh and then another. At the third try, with Coutts himself carefully arranging each garment, the weight finally behaved itself and one of the most famous careers in modern yachting was launched - after he'd revealed he'd sailed the crucial days in the regatta with a burning boil on his bum in the Finn's cramped space and hard seat.
IF THERE'S a boil on the bum of the America's Cup, it is the land-locked, lawyer-choked schemozzle that continues to strand itself on the sand bar of the American legal system. Coutts is relishing the challenge of the Louis Vuitton series, which starts this week, as a chance to get out of the corporate wars and into the game of chess on the water.
Yet it is BMW Oracle that has helped to promote this situation, with its court challenge to holders Alinghi over what many found an autocratic protocol released at the end of the last Cup regatta; which many said demonstrated an unacceptable degree of control by the holder over the event. That began a tortuous legal process in 2007, destined to come to an end only by late March or early April.
If they win the decision, Oracle will win the right to sail for the Cup in a one-on-one challenge against Alinghi in an enormous, striking trimaran said to challenge all previous notions of speed and worth at least $15 million and maybe a great deal more.
Lose and they are out of the next America's Cup as Alinghi will almost certainly close the door on them. I ask Coutts if the rumours are true; that Oracle boss Ellison will then give up on the America's Cup totally; pack up his tent and his boats.
"Under these rules [Alinghi's], I think that could happen," he says. "It's really up to Larry to say but I think that could be the case."
Oracle have always maintained that - and Coutts insists it is the case - if they win in court, they will immediately throw open the door for a conventional multi-challenger America's Cup regatta, including Alinghi.
So what would he rather do - sail the exciting 90-foot trimaran or a conventional America's Cup yacht?
"I guess, from my point of view, I prefer conventional," he says, "because that is what I am accustomed to."
But he gets a wistful look when he thinks of the trimaran which has impressed many with its 90-foot by 90-foot square dimensions, its huge sail span and its ability, some say, to get up to 40 knots out of a 20-knot breeze. It is the size of two basketball courts, its mast reaches towards the skies (Coutts once said over the phone that he was on the 13th floor of the hotel overlooking the trimaran and he still wasn't near the top of the mast) and it challenges the sailors not just to make it go fast - but to keep control.
"That thing runs along on the edge of controllability," Coutts grins. "It is something totally new and I can't claim to be familiar with it yet - it's an amazing experience but an exacting task and not one that I am used to."
"But you never know whether some of partners looking at this thing [the trimaran] from the side might be quite turned on by it and we might find an outlet for it yet." Oracle's nemesis, Alinghi, have not produced a trimaran yet and billionaire owner
Ernesto Bertarelli told the International Herald Tribune late last year that he hoped he wouldn't have to launch one. Ellison and Coutts, he says, simply want to win the Cup without having to race other challengers for it and Alinghi have gone about organising the next Cup regatta, complete with 19 challengers, in the expectation they will win the court battle.
Bertarelli, told Ellison had said the problems between Alinghi and Oracle stemmed from Bertarelli's antipathy to Coutts, who won the Cup in 2003 before leaving Alinghi after a dispute, said: "Russell's history is one of repeatedly turning himself against his previous employer. He left Team New Zealand and then he left Alinghi and tried to destroy each of his previous teams. You just have to look at his record."
It is this bitter sparring from the background of the America's cup that invests the Louis Vuitton series with such interest. The use of largely identical America's Cup class boats - two from Oracle and two from Emirates Team New Zealand - means
technology (one of the key differentials in the America's Cup) has been honed right back. This is a sailors' regatta - with the emphasis on the crew and the difference they can make to the yacht they draw by lot at the start of each racing day.
That's why the teams in the Louis Vuitton are so pumped up about this regatta. Rivalries are re-engaged;
reputations are at stake; there's action on the water instead of round the water cooler.
"Technology is part of the America's Cup and it will always be but, even with equal boats, there will be speed differences according to the way the boats are sailed,"says Coutts.
"That's the interesting thing. It brings teams like Shosholoza (South Africa) into play and they will be damned hard to beat, for instance. You know, some crews will sail better and some won't and there'll be reasons for that which people will be looking hard at," says Coutts.
"I've had it said to me that this is a bit of an exhibition, this regatta, a bit of fun. Well, I find that a bit pathetic. All the teams here are wanting to win. I do."
THERE'S ALSO the delicious prospect of all the America's Cup politics, backbiting and intensity translating into familiar people on unfamiliar territory - like Brad Butterworth, of Alinghi, skippering a Team New Zealand boat after his well-publicised jump to Alinghi years ago; or the Alinghi skipper on board an Oracle boat, given their courtroom-based antipathy; like Coutts on a New Zealand boat after his even more publicised flight from ETNZ to Alinghi
and then Oracle; like Bertarelli finding himself on board one of Ellison's boats. It's a crazy old world.
Coutts looks genuinely surprised when asked if he had noticed any lingering feeling from the bad old days when many Kiwis were affronted that he would literally jump ship in pursuit of, according to many, the dollar.
He looks tanned and relaxed. Coutts has been in New Zealand since early this month, visiting Auckland, Whangaparaoa, sailing to Kawau among other places and visiting Queenstown.
"No," he says, looking just a tad puzzled. "There's been no problems so far. Everyone and everything seems okay and pretty friendly and everyone seems pretty excited by this regatta."
You can't say the same thing about the America's Cup - at least, not yet. Coutts notes ruefully that Alinghi have said they will not negotiate if they win the case.
"I think they do not want us in the competition," he says. "If we lose the case, we will have to face that at that time. But from my point of view it is a sad business when you exclude competitors; it's wrong. It's not sport.
"No-one wants a competition where someone writes the rules to control individuals, designers, sailors, teams...whatever. If I am racing and teams or people are excluded, it is just not the same. I think a lot of top sportsmen feel like that - you want to test yourself; to be challenged; to measure yourself against the best. That's what you are in the game for."
Coutts thinks the Cup can ill afford to exclude anyone in these days of economic difficulties and he sees a future for the America's Cup where an independent management company is set up - separate from the holders and distanced from the temptation for the holder to deal itself the good cards.
