That’s not that much, really, is it? Ten pints each. A good night out. A couple of good bottle of wine. Fifty bucks.

Fifty bucks times four million Kiwis is 100 million Euro. That’s the money that could fund a campaign with the gear and the edge to match Alinghi;’s millions and to bring the America’s Cup back to New Zealand – and you’d most likely have change for the victory parties.

Sailing is a hard sport to get people to love. It’s complicated, it’s techie, it’s expensive. But it’s a sport at which Kiwis excel, and it’s a sport that has planted New Zealand smack in the consciousness of the rest of the world not just as a place that produces raw-boned farmers who run up King County hills with a sheep under each arm, but as a place that produces cutting edge yacht designers, men like Farr, Holland, Blake who redraw what people think is possible in the hardest oceans of the world, a country that produces boats built with the sort of technology that F1 teams come to learn from combined with brilliantly simple ideas like, “Mast back until in not too powered up, mast forward until powered up enough” that have changed the world of sailing forever.

That’s what New Zealand has done for sailing. That’s what sailing has done for how the world sees New Zealand.

It’s been like that because New Zealand built from the bottom. Most of the guys who now shake down the America’s Cup came through Lasers, through Olympic classes, through dinghies. That has none of the high-ticket glory attached to the rich-twats’ playground we’ve seen in Valencia.

It’s hard yakka. It’s soul-destroying. This is what your life as an Olympic campaigner is; you get up at six. You hit the gym for two to three hours. You train on the water for six to eight hours. You get in, fix the boat, train a bit more, hunt for money to keep it going and sleep for eight hours. That’s out of competition. In competition, you do the same, but four years depends on luck and your skill in taking it out of the equation. And you won’t get TV ads to pay for it; endorsements are for thosse who need it least, the already successful.

And you do that for ten to twelve years. You scrape a living, if even that, coaching new sailors, kids, club sailors. You can forget about a house, you can most likely forget basic family life, because you’re following the Five Ring Circus around the world to the ranking points to get you to the Olympics.

These guys give that up to represent New Zealand, and then get snapped up to sail rich guys’ boats fast. You can’t blame a lot of them; this is the one chance, the one cash-cow coming past, that’ll give them a chance to have a life at all.

But, if they’re supported, they can do it. It happens in the UK at the moment, and they come back from Olympics laden with medals, and then, like Ainslie, Percy, Walker, are snapped up by America’s Cup teams. And the rest of the world pay for it ultimately, because we buy their gear, from UK companies, and the money comes back in. I sail a boat made in Australia, with mostly Australian and British fittings, and with British sails. Two brothers – the Kyrwoods – made the boats for themselves, won, and we then bought their boats. And the fittings they bought locally, so Ronstan now sell millions here. Why can’t Kiwi firms do the same?

They can. They do. And off the back of the America’s Cup. But to do it, to get all that money coming in, to pay for now, to pay for the seed capital of Olympic sailors who’ll keep it going for you, to pay for these guys to make their own sails or boats as did the Aussies and persuade the rest of the world to buy them by beating us – as they have done, as they will given the chance and support – they need seed capital to take it back from Bertarelli and those who dick around with the America’s Cup for their ego.

I grew up envying the way New Zealand put money into sailing. The Irish guys who now win races like the Sydney-HoBart did as well. And we learnt from you. We learnt how to use money to make more money, long term. That’s why an Irish guy trained by a Kiwi built the boats that won the last Round the World.

It’s your choice, folks. But, for mine, fifty bucks a head seems cheap at twice the price.

You decide. A pint less for ten weeks for ten pints at a victory celebration? Is that worth it…?