“Kia hora te marino,
kia whakapapa pounamu te moana,
kia tere te kārohirohi i mua i tō huarahi”
”May the calm be widespread
may the sea glisten like greenstone
may the shimmer of light dance across your pathway”
There’s nothing worse than watching your team lose the America’s Cup as it can go on for days. Longer if the weather plays up. Which it was.
Alinghi were on match point in the 31st America’s Cup and I’d asked Hone for help crafting a message in the increasing likelihood of the team not being able to claw back the points, and Hone had offered up the whakatauki composed by Rangawhenua of Ngāti Pāhere, a hapu of Ngāti Maniapoto.
There’s another version, as there so often is, of the last line; ‘may your path be straight like the flight of the dove.’ Translation is always tricky, but the spirit was captured. Hone was given it by the late Koro Wetere, also Ngāti Maniapoto so we were in a good place.
Not so much out on the Waitemata, where things were getting bitter.
New Zealand let out a collective gasp when the mast snapped, but real damage was being done elsewhere too. The blustery Blackheart campaign was only meant to poke fun at Russell Coutts and Brad Butterworth, who had left Team New Zealand to head the rival Alinghi syndicate. There was a whole lot of dramatic outrage and ‘how-dare-yous’ from the campaign organisers at the start, but things soon took a southerly tack, ending in death threats and intimidation.
It was all good harmless fun until it wasn’t.
Team New Zealand had been quiet throughout the whole affair, staying focussed on the water as Alinghi turned the screws.
But when given a good old fashioned slippering, it was time to gently sprinkle some sugar. Manaaki time. Win, lose or draw, shaking your opponents hand at the end of the match is good sportsmanship. We expect it. The sponsors did. The many tamariki who wrote letters proudly displayed on the walls and ceiling of the team’s base certainly did.
We needed something soothing, gracious, and heartfelt. The karakia - a blessing - was often offered to wish travellers well. It was pitch perfect. Exhausted, hurting and humbled, Team New Zealand stepped up and went high.
‘Courage,’ said Ernest Hemingway, ‘is grace under pressure.’ And he wasn’t wrong.
The message aired in a television documentary about Sir Peter Blake that same night. Hone and I watched it with the rest of New Zealand on the telly. ‘It was only a rich white man’s sport until we lost it eh?’ observed Hone with a small wry smile.
He wasn’t wrong either.
Ka kite anō au i a koe.