KEY POINTS:
If you listened carefully, you could almost hear the ghosts of 2003 retreating across the waters of the Waitemata Harbour after Emirates Team New Zealand's 28-second victory over BMW Oracle at the Louis Vuitton Pacific Series yesterday.
In the bad old days of 2003, then rookie America's Cup skipper Dean Barker was comprehensively whupped 5-0 by former boss and mentor Russell Coutts, who had defected to Alinghi.
This was their first clash since then in America's Cup boats, although, as everyone is reminding themselves, this isn't the America's Cup.
But it is the next best thing and Barker's student turned the tables on Coutts the teacher yesterday.
Coutts is famously undefeated in the Cup which he has won three times, is regarded as pretty much the world's best sailor and is sailing on waters where he has a great deal of affinity and local knowledge.
Coutts grinned - as much a signal as anything of the friendliness and openness of this regatta compared to the grimly lawyer-locked Cup squabbles - when asked if the time had come when the apprentice trumped the master.
"Oh, it's happened before today," said Coutts.
Oddly enough, though, all the pressure was on Barker yesterday in spite of that 2003 shellacking.
Maybe there was a touch of mischief in Louis Vuitton's Bruno Trouble when he mediated the skippers' press conference ahead of the first racing day - but it captured the pressure well enough when he introduced Barker by saying: "So, Dean - you are sailing in your own waters; you are in your own boats; you are going straight through to the finals; can you lose?"
Mischievous because Trouble knows as well as anyone that the only certain thing about any yacht race is that anything can happen but it clearly spotlighted Barker's dilemma. Win the Louis Vuitton and things are as they should be. Lose - and watch the criticism fly with ghostly wings back to the dark days of 2003.
As he got off the boat after the win, team NZ syndicate head Grant Dalton joked: "That'll save us getting a savaging in the morning."
Such is the intense and sometimes unfair pressure of top-end sport.
In the end, Barker coped with that pressure well, winning the start to gain the coveted right-hand side of the course with trusty tactician Ray Davies doing the business and finding the wind well.
Barker himself was circumspect about the win. He knows the inherent danger in yachting of hanging out all your washing on the line, no matter how good the weather forecast.
"Everyone makes a big play of
me racing against Russell and Brad [Butterworth] but I am very mindful that it's a long event," he said.
"Our first priority is to qualify for the Gold Fleet [the elimination series] so we can take the pressure off.
"But there is no denying that it was satisfying [to win]. Oracle are a very strong team, they know their boats well and are great sailors.
"We still have a lot of work to do. It's good to take the win but it's also good to be critical even in victory and we are still making mistakes."
The crucial part of the race - in the balance until this point - was around the bottom mark. The two yachts had diced with each other after rounding the second mark, with Team NZ ahead by only two seconds.
Team NZ had come out of the start with a small lead but the racing was as close as the near-identical boats and shorter course had promised to deliver. Oracle led by 10 metres at one stage and matters looked entirely open.
Team NZ had been protecting the right side all the way, although this
looked like it might be a shaky decision as they rounded the third mark.
Oracle took the port, a simpler and more direct route, while the Kiwis stayed with the right.
It was the right decision. They picked up a windshift and neck-and-neck became crane-your-neck as Team NZ shot four boat lengths clear and to a lead of about 24 seconds. That was effectively the end of the race.
Oracle were too far back to mount an effective attack without picking up a significant windshift and also too far back to interfere with Team NZ's air.
But Barker, in his gentle but determined style, wasn't doing or saying anything that could be labelled 'ecstatic' and said the way they had sailed the second leg had troubled him.
"We didn't sail a good second leg. We got a little bit too defensive and we let them back into the race. We took away our options [when it came to the third mark] at the bottom of the gate.
"We were pretty clear we wanted to keep protecting the starboard rights but it was touch and go.
"Ray [Davies] and Adam [Beashel] did a great job in looking up the course and watching the water for opportunities - it is easy to make a wrong call there," said Barker.
They were sailing in Oracle's USA 87 boat, supposedly slightly slower than USA 98 (which BMW Oracle crewed yesterday), although you will not find one person at this regatta prepared to say that any one boat is significantly faster than the other; significant enough to influence a result.
Which means that this is a sailor's regatta, where the significance comes from the crews and the way they sail the boats, rather than technology and boatspeed. In the America's Cup, the fastest boat wins - to murder a quote from Butterworth - but in the LVPS, the crew are kings.
That helped Barker banish his 2003 demons when, after all, Team NZ's ill-fated boat was the major villain, finishing the regatta with a broken mast and that unforgettable quote from an anonymous Team NZ crewman which boomed over TV's special effects mike: "This f****** boat...".
Coutts underlined the sailing aspects when asked if he could have done anything differently to win.
"We made quite a few mistakes. The right hand side was favoured and we ended up in a position which handed them the start," he said.
"That was the first big mistake and then we made a few smaller ones which weren't fatal but they all added up. Every metre counts out there on this course ... and it makes a big difference between being able to capitalise or not.
"On the first downwind run, we got on their wind and it was all on at the bottom mark but they were able to take the right hand side and they got a nice shift halfway up the second windward beat. It was pretty much game over at that point."
While the Team NZ-Oracle clash didn't hinge entirely on the start, the other races showed just how important starting manoeuvres are on the shorter course being used in the LVPS.
In the first race, Greek Challenge pulled off the first surprise, beating Shosholoza (South Africa).
Smarting from the wee ding of Friday, Kiwi skipper Gavin Brady had a point to prove and to move the Greeks out of minus points territory.
He did so by making an aggressive move in the pre-start and Shosholoza copped a penalty.
He then stayed on the favoured right side of the course, fending off South African efforts to get back in the race and won by 56 seconds.
Damiani Italia - which lost to Team NZ on Friday - shut down two-time world match racing champion Ian Williams, helming Team China, to win by 1 minute 17 seconds, with the lead up to 500 metres at times.
Damiani skipper Francesco Bruni showed the Italian syndicate could be an interesting newcomer with a clever start and built his lead consistently in the 16-knot breeze.
Alinghi also performed clinically - beating Luna Rossa by 50 seconds after Ed Baird, Alinghi's helmsman well known for his bullish starts, outpointed Luna Rossa's skipper, Peter Holmberg.
Holmberg is also known as a good, aggressive starter but the Swiss syndicate slipped the leash as Holmberg tried to lure them into an error and started the race 40 metres ahead, an advantage never surrendered.
