Auld Mug visits Southland
From the picturesque shores of Lake Te Anau to the southernmost yacht club in New Zealand, with a brief stop at a maimai in between, the America’s Cup has visited the people of Southland.
Yesterday, several team members along with Emirates Team New Zealand chief executive Grant Dalton took the Auld Mug on a tour through Southland, giving people the opportunity to take photos and put questions to team members.
The first stop in Southland was in Te Anau, where the trophy was taken to the Marakura Yacht Club for the locals to see.
Originally there were no plans for the cup to visit the town but Team New Zealand performance engineer Nick Hutchins, who was a born and raised in Te Anau, saw that the trophy was heading to Bluff and thought it should stop at his hometown.
While the cup got a great reception wherever it went, it was nice knowing half the people in the crowd, he said.
One of the great things about the tour was being able to take the cup to regional yacht clubs and just chat to people, Hutchins said.
After leaving Te Anau, the team made a cheeky stop at a central Southland maimai on their way to Invercargill.
Team New Zealand platform coordinator and sailor Richard Meacham explained that one of the men responsible for building the boat, Mark Hauser, had been a regular visitor to Southland for a few years.
Hauser was one of the founders of Southern Spars, the company that was appointed to build the Team New Zealand boat for the 35th America’s Cup.
Hauser said his friend and former All Black Craig Innes invited him to come duck shooting on opening weekend in Southland after another friend was unable to come.
It was here he became mates with Southlander Sean Bellew and others that went shooting at the Avondale farm.
Although Hauser was not in the country, he made sure the Auld Mug visited the group’s maimai.
The tour was about taking the trophy to the people and that’s what they did, Hauser said.
In Invercargill, the trophy was taken to the Civic Theatre, where about 70 people had gathered to see the cup.
Invercargill mayor Tim Shadbolt welcomed the team and the trophy before the team fielded questions about the new boats the team was proposing for the next cup.
Dalton said while a lot of details around the next competition were not yet finalised, the team would look to return to a monohull design.
There was a desire to return to a more traditional style of sailing, Dalton said.
After the Invercargill visit finished, the cup was on the road once again, heading to the Bluff Yacht Club as the tour wrapped up in the South Island.
When the trophy arrived, students from Bluff School greeted the team and trophy with a haka as Bluff Yacht Club commodore Anders Jagvik carried the cup into the clubrooms.
Dalton told the crowd he had visited the town many times and it was like a pilgrimage for the team to always make sure they went to the Bluff Yacht Club.
It was the yacht clubs like the one in Bluff that made up the very fabric of the sailing community that had supported Team New Zealand through the years, Dalton said.
‘‘It’s a real honour to be able to bring it down.’’