As everyone starts to get excited about Emirates Team New Zealand possibly bringing the America's Cup home (and the job is not yet done), I believe most in the country, including our ministry charged with innovation, design and, dare I say it, science, has missed the point.
This is not a story about a boat race.
This is a story of world-class, world-leading technology, innovation, engineering and design.
This is the story that should be being told. Win or lose on the water, this team has been a shining example, an eye-opener, of what we are capable.
As Lord Ernest Rutherford said: ''We haven't got the money, so we have to think''.
That should be our mantra. In a place like this, next door to Silicon Valley, he should have been our talisman.
We are not winning this race solely because of our sailors. We are winning it because of innovation on board the boat.
A leading edge to the wing that can be twisted to optimise wind flow across the sail.
A self-setting jib that gains the crew critical seconds in tacks and gybes.
A fibre optic network on board that fires updated data to screens around the boat, all built in a container on Pier 32 by three guys.
One of them, an American genius, was attracted to live in New Zealand because of the culture of this team and the beauty of our country.
Check out the engineers setting this boat up every morning, Not a spanner in sight - all handheld tablets. And we bemoan the $36 million investment made in this technology company called Team New Zealand!
As proponents of a ministry charged with promoting our country as a leader in innovation, technology and smart thinking, we should be shouting this from the rooftops.
Instead, our Prime Minister says we have not achieved anything unless we win this thing.
We shouldn't even be here, but we are. And we have seen the impact this has had on Oracle. It appreciates what Team New Zealand has done, even if we are missing it.
We made a video as a gift from ''a nation born of sailors'' to ''the best sailors in the world''.
It celebrates an unbroken line of design, engineering, technology, seamanship and navigation, from our Maori ancestors, who sailed the Pacific to Aotearoa, to this high-tech flying machine called Aotearoa, representing us so superbly on the waters off San Francisco Bay.
No other country, or billionaire, brings to the America's Cup a story quite like it.
It is this that the world has recognised in the Team New Zealand challenge. And I wish our Prime Minister could have done the same.
