KEY POINTS:
It might just be a hunk of carbon fibre, and not the prettiest one at that, but NZL92 holds the hopes of a nation.
It is New Zealand's best chance of winning back the America's Cup.
The boat was christened in Auckland last October. The younger sibling of
NZL84, which set the benchmark in last year's pre-regattas, 92 had high expectations to live up to.
Like its sister, 92 is a skinny little thing, maybe the skinniest of all the current cup boats, and possesses one hell of a full bow.
Skipper and helmsman Dean Barker says that when creating NZL84 and NZL92, Team New Zealand were looking for a boat that was strong upwind.
"That extra quarter or half a boat length you can gain up the beat is pretty golden at times if you can make a lee bow tack stick or cross or whatever. That is quite often the race determined there and then.
"The other big focus was on balance. How much rudder load you feel through the wheel. Trying to create a boat that was very easy to balance so it didn't require a lot of work with the sail settings.
"You don't want a boat that is very hard to keep in the groove.
"84 and 92 are very easy to sail when they are set up well."
Barker recalls the first time NZL84 lined up against the syndicate's 2003-generation boat, NZL81.
"It was a pretty cool feeling ... we knew straight away we had made a big jump."
The two most noticeable features on the black boats are their narrowness and big blunt bows - features which once differentiated them from their rivals but are now common among the 12 syndicates
"Beauty is in the eye of the beholder and she looks pretty darn good to me," Hutchinson says.
"Everyone feels like they own a piece of that boat. When 84 was launched it was the end of the 2003 Cup. We had a new boat and a new team. When 92 was launched it was just an evolution of 84."
Runner/pitman Tony Rae says these are by far the leanest cup boats he has ever sailed on.
"In my job I go from the back of the boat to the mast and back again. Trying to get from the back forward, past guys that are grinding, is one of the biggest missions of the day.
"The guys haven't got any smaller but the area has.
"It feels like flatting with 17 other people in a two-bedroom apartment.
"That has caused a lot of areas to be looked at carefully. Detailed things to make crew manoeuvres work smoothly."
Unlike 84, NZL92 did not have to go through being thrust on its side on the Hauraki Gulf, its mast almost parallel to the water, to see what broke.
It's a practice more common among round-the-world race yachts than America's Cup boats. Team New Zealand managing director Grant Dalton insisted it was necessary to truly test the boat's reliability.
"It was a pretty cool thing to do," Rae says. "There were a few tense moments with people trying to get out of the way in case what we were testing did break ... but we were ready for it.
"Dalts [Dalton] kept on saying, 'This is great fun'."
When asked what they like about NZL92, the sailors say it is good all-round with no glaring weaknesses.
"NZL92 feels strong across the board," Barker says.
"Right through the wind range, upwind, downwind. Downwind in certain conditions it feels like it has a click on the opposition we come up against. While the control is quite often determined upwind, having the ability downwind to slip away a little bit from your opponent or put yourself in stronger positions ... it is quite a nice feature."
And NZL92 clearly loves the chop. Hutchinson muses it may remind it of home on the Hauraki Gulf.
"The boat locks in and doesn't wander around a lot. It just trucks right along. "The fact we could stick the bow through two-metre waves and come through the other side with flying colours [in the last semifinal race against Desafio Espanol], that was a pretty good testament to the guys that designed her, who built her and who engineered her.
"It is hard to say that there is one thing that is really good about the boat, except you can't say there is anything bad to say about her.
"I have never sailed a race yet where I have thought the boat is not fast enough."
Rae says he will definitely have a bond with NZL92 if they win.
"In 2000 [during the Team New Zealand campaign] our philosophy was if we lined up with Prada and we were even, we were really happy because we knew we could outsail them round the course.
"We never went out there thinking we have to be faster, we were just happy to be even. That is how it will be this time. We don't expect to sail away from these other teams, that's just not how it is."
But perhaps the most comforting comment about NZL92 came from strategist Ray Davies.
"It is a lot stronger than NZL82, so that is a big plus."
