With Emirates New Zealand now 4-up today (Monday) in the 37th America's Cup at Barcelona, there's no denying the trend even if challenger Ineos Brittania is going that little bit better in each succeeding race. For it seems that so too is ENZ, remarkable as that may seem, for her four wins include coming from behind after Ineos got the better start.
Kiwi skipper Peter Burling is something of a boy wonder. Way back in 2017, when he was barely old enough to have a car driving licence, he "just happened to be in Europe" when Ian Budgen (a well-worn veteran, among other things, of the Green Dragon Experience) engineered Burling's addition to the steering panel on the Budgen-skippered Baltic 115 Nikata, the biggest boat entered for the 2017 Rolex Fastnet Race.
In fact, it's a moot point as to how Nikata had been accepted as an entry, as she seemed to be above some ancient upper size limits. But if you had an absolutely glorious boat like Nikata knocking at your door, wouldn't you reckon ancient upper size limits were just that - ancient - and probably long discarded.
The biggest and probably the most beautiful boat in the 2017 Fastnet Race fleet - the Baltic 115 Nikata. Photo: Facebook
The problem is that Nikata was in a class of her own. There was no comparably-sized boat for the very young helmsman to set his performance against. Despite that, they whizzed round the course to such good effect that at times they were leading their class, and even better, at times they were first overall on corrected time.
It was looking good when they finished at Plymouth (remember Plymouth?), but a freshening favourable breeze for smaller craft (they were all smaller) saw Nikita toppled from everything except the cup-worthy first to finish. Nevertheless, as something to add to your already astonishing CV, successfully helming a beauty like Nikita speedily round the Fastnet Race when you were still in your teens surely deserves a paragraph or two of its own.
