Training report by James Stagg of the GBR Challenge team in New Zealand.

We are back at our second home in Auckland and into the daily regime of gym at 6.00am then training on the water, whenever possible.

But there is one big difference from our last visit. It is now winter so the days are shorter and, needless to say, it is wet and windy.

In the last three weeks there have been few weather windows to train as one low pressure seems to follow another up from the southern ocean to New Zealand.

Even the cup holders, Team New Zealand, who always seem to go out in plenty of breeze (to prove they can!) have recently lost a lot of days sailing.

With the time difference between UK and New Zealand, one major perk is that we get to watch the World Cup in the evening though, on the down side, we miss Alan Hansen and co. The remainder of the sailing team stayed in Europe to take part in two-match race events.

The first was the ACI cup in Split, Croatia and the second was the Omega Seamaster Cup held in Trieste, Italy.

The Swedish Match circuit is a good chance for the America's Cup Syndicates to send teams to a top international event and race against what will be their opponents in the Louis Vuitton and America's Cup.

Over the last year, GBR Challenge have sent out teams to compete in these events.

Three different skippers have represented us and crew members have been rotated in an attempt to spread experience throughout the team.

The result is that we have achieved our aim of increasing experience but we have only achieved one semi-final place at the Congressional Cup in Long Beach.

The guys are due into Auckland tomorrow morning so I have been unable to talk through these last two events but judging from the reports they went well.

In the ACI Cup, after the double round robin, we were tied on points for the last semi-final slot with two other teams but failed to advance on a count back system.

The Omega Seamaster Cup proved better and the team qualified for the semi-finals where they were defeated by the eventual winners of the event, Team New Zealand.

We finished third after winning the petit final...which means we are beginning to make steps in the right direction.

A very welcome distraction from the weather has been the arrival of our new boat, Wight Lightning which was built by the boatbuilding team in Cowes.

The boys have done a great job and the pressure on them has not eased up as the hull of GBR 78, our second boat, was well into construction before the naming of Wight Lightning.

In the past boatbuilders, wrongly, get overlooked in these campaigns and the "talk" often tends to be centred on sailors and designers but the whole GBR build team have had to work unbelievably hard to get the team to where we are today.

Of the Louis Vuitton entrants, only GBR and Oracle are yet to launch their boats. The other syndicates all have launched one of their boats, while One World have sailed both of theirs for a while and the French have launched but have had limited sailing due to being rammed by a Greenpeace protester!

Speculation on the use of canards (bow rudders) by some teams continues and no doubt will continue to be a topic of conversation until all the syndicates boats arrive in Auckland.

Our first sail in Wight Lightning can not come soon enough. Hopefully it will prove to be uneventful in terms of problems and the crew will return to the dock, all smiles.