Sailing: Sinking feeling for Kiwis

"She'll be right, mate," is a favourite Kiwi saying when optimism is the only option in the face of adversity, but the whole stunned New Zealand nation was struggling to pick itself up after Team New Zealand lost the opening race of the America's Cup to Switzerland's Alinghi after a catalogue of disasters.

They could not even blame the man who beat them, Russell Coutts, who has been painted a villain since his defection. This was a self-inflicted wound as a series of calamities meant that TNZ not only lost its first race ever in the America's Cup but did not even complete the first leg.

First sign of alarm was the sight of Matt Mitchell fighting a losing battle with a five-gallon blue bucket as water poured over the side into the whole after-section of the New Zealand yacht, the weapon of which the home supporters are so proud, with its ingeniously designed hull appendage which is supposed to turbocharge performance.

Skipper Dean Barker said it had never happened before and blamed wash from the spectator fleet, coupled with a sharp chop kicked up by a 20-to-25-knot breeze. His head of syndicate and design co-ordinator, Tom Schnackenberg, said it had never happened "to that extent".

Then the team who pride themselves on engineering excellence saw first the end of the mainsail boom snap "with a fairly loud bang" and then the titanium fitting which secures the headsail to the deck disintegrate. That, in turn, led to the sail ripping out of its fitting, and when attempts to hoist another failed because the groove into which it fits had been wrenched apart, the proud Kiwis accepted the inevitable and called for a tow home.

This left Coutts and his team with the mechanical task of sailing their boat carefully round the rest of the 18.5-mile course to notch up their first point in the best-of-nine series. And it left his next-door neighbours checking every nut and bolt ahead of today's second race. That should be staged in much lighter conditions. TNZ can easily replace the boom and fittings, and will hope that the considerable power they displayed in the opening minutes will be repeated.

Coutts, in contrast, will be hoping that his 11 straight wins in America's Cup races will be extended to a dozen.