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It may have been Christmas, but there was little time to relax as crews were called to arms to get their boats shipshape for the short sprint to Auckland. The mast problems on Innovation Kvaerner and Swedish Match proved preoccupying and although they were made safe for the Tasman crossing, Krantz made plans to have a new mast to be flown to Auckland since he didn’t fancy his chances of making it round Cape Horn on the fifth leg with equipment that was even vaguely dodgy.

Dennis Conner showed up in Sydney to take over from Standbridge on Toshiba, a surprise move bearing in mind the efforts he went to in Fremantle to deny the rumours that he would feature in the fourth leg.

He was desperate to see for himself why Toshiba were lagging behind and the 1,270 nm hike would, he believed, provide some answers. "I've been part of this programme for two years and I don't think anyone would begrudge me a few days at sea.”

His eagerness to push Toshiba to her limits looked a little overenthusiastic at the start and they crossed the line three seconds before the gun. "I just could not wait for the chance to put Toshiba across the starting line first," Conner said later. "Well, I got my wish as we crossed a half-boat length ahead at the favoured end, only to hear another gun, meaning we started prematurely and had to return to the line and restart, which of course meant we went from first to last. Talk about dreams turning to ashes."

This error could have proved costly, but after 24 hours Conner was among the top three boats, his sights fixed firmly on a podium place. When he joined Krantz in the route south, while Cayard opted to go north, their advantage over the rest of the fleet grew, though as they approached Cape Reinga at the northern tip of New Zealand, it was Swedish Match who were up front, with a six nm lead. Cayard was second to last, ruing his tactical error.

Krantz thought he had it in the bag, but within hours of rounding the Cape, Swedish Match slipped into a windless hole and stopped dead, much to the delight of the rest of the chasing pack.

Said Conner, "Someone said it looked like there was an America's Cup boat meeting us, and I told them they must be nuts. Then we realised it was a Whitbread boat and when it turned out to be Gunnar Krantz and Swedish Match we were all laughing."

They sat there motionless while four boats passed them by, giving their windless zone a wide berth.

It was one of their worst moments in the race, said co-skipper Erle Williams. "It's a yachtsman's worst nightmare…when you are leading, to fall into a hole and to know that the others are coming at you."

By the time they moved off, Merit Cup, crewed largely by Kiwis, had stolen a march, driven on by the ecstatic reception they knew awaited them as the first boat into their home port.

Dalton pulled into the lead, but Conner, who was right on his stern, threatened to cause a major upset at the last minute. The two of them scrapped like cat and dog for honours in front of a crowd of thousands, most of them frenzied Kiwis desperate to see Conner put in his place. The weather gods joined in the excitement and for the last couple of nm, delivered 45 knots of wind to make the closing moments some of the most breathtaking of any. Dalton ripped through the convoy of spectator boats at breakneck speed and hurled across the line first and Conner heaved over two minutes later, to see Merit Cup’s mainsail shredded by a fierce gust of wind.

The force, clearly, was with Dalton who was overcome. "I was telling my crew on the way in of the two greatest days in life," he said. "The first was four years ago when we beat Tokio into here, and the second was today."

Cayard came fourth, but earned enough points to retain the overall lead, while Krantz did his best to shrug off the disappointment of arriving in fifth place, after a stonkingly fast leg.

On Silk Cut, brows that were previously furrowed by their consistently poor performances now bore yawning cracks after yet another failure. Tales of crew conflict were rampant and Smith did his best to quash the rumours by declaring on his arrival in Auckland in sixth place that there would be no crew changes.

He then made two changes that stunned everyone. Steve Hayles, the navigator, and watch captain Neil Graham were replaced by Gerard Mitchell and weather expert Vincent Geake, but wizened old race pundits rather felt these changes were too little and much too late.

Forever competitive, Conner filed a protest against EF Language for failing to display her navigation lights after sunset, in violation of race rules. After much to-ing and fro-ing, as the International Jury tried to establish who said what, when and how, the protest was thrown out and Conner returned to his office, leaving Standbridge once again in charge of Toshiba.