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There were never going to be hugs and high fives. Just a few handshakes and back-slaps at best.
A celebratory party at the base? No way. One beer and home to bed.
Even the bottles of champagne gifted to them by the organisers went unopened after Team New
Zealand's victory over Desafio Espanol which earned a spot in the challenger series final.
Was that boss Grant Dalton barking that there was nothing to celebrate yet - so put them away or send them to the Spanish?
Team tactician Terry Hutchinson said: "Everyone is happy but don't expect to see any of us do cartwheels - that is just how we are.
"We have two more best-of-nine series to get through, hopefully, and so there is a reason to feel good and be happy about the success we had today - but I think we are all aware of what is ahead of us."
Sitting on the press conference stage, the tactician looked zonked. The 5-2 series win had clearly taken its toll, especially the last race, when the wind was up and the sea particularly lumpy.
"I haven't slept in about six weeks," Hutchinson said.
"That might be a little bit of the nature of the beast when you are standing there looking at pot-holes of wind and wondering how you are going to get past them."
Hutchinson said yesterday's race against the Spanish, which they won by 1 minute 18 seconds, made them grateful for the two summers they had spent training on Auckland's Hauraki Gulf where such violent conditions were the norm.
It probably also made them grateful that Dalton had gone out of his way to test the black boats' durability last year (see panel, right).
"The nice thing about all the preparation work is you have confidence in your equipment and confidence in the guys around you," said Hutchinson.
And confidence is what Team New Zealand will need as they prepare to line up against Italians Luna Rossa, who are on fire.
First they need to conjure up a plan to shut down Luna Rossa's helmsman James Spithill.
Then they also have to think of a way to deal with the sailing style of tactician Torben Grael, who follows his own instincts rather than the classic rules of match racing. Which makes the Italians hard to defend against and hard to attack.
"You look at Luna Rossa and the series they just sailed and they were fearless in some of their calls up the beat," Hutchinson said.
'In our style we were much happier with a [two-length] boat race than a [20-length], because it is a race you can control.
"We will continue to work on a lot of the little subtleties.
"Knowing that we can make good gains from the small things - being able to do a lot of tacks and a lot of things down speed and NZL92 seems to like those things. But is difficult to do those things if the guy you are racing buggers off into a corner."
Hutchinson believes Desafio Espanol have helped them be well prepared for the final.
"You can't say enough about the job Desafio did. I think we were the only ones who believed they were going to take races off us. They have a fast boat and really good sailors.
"Every time we went out there, to me, it always felt 50-50, even though potentially it was stronger on our side."
But having seen how easily Luna Rossa dismissed Oracle, does Team New Zealand perhaps wish they'd faced the Americans instead?
"If you had of known how the whole thing was going to play out, I don't know if we did [make the right choice].
"I think when you looked at it on paper, and looked at our past results against the Spanish team, we chose what we thought was right for us. We knew that we were going to get punched a couple of times and were going to have to get back up from it and go out and continue to sail good races.
"From our perspective, it was a very good test for us because we were going to face that probably in our next opponent as well."
But before they worry about that next opponent, the team will have a much needed couple of days off.
"I think we have a pretty good handle on the things we can do to our boat to match Luna Rossa's," Hutchinson said.
"There are a lot of little things we can do better. If we want to beat Luna Rossa we are going to have to sail better - and raise our game another level."
