Emirates Team New Zealand take trophy

Dubai: The Portugal Trophy is not the only thing Emirates Team New Zealand are taking away from the first Audi MedCup circuit event for 2010, they also have a 20-point lead into the next event in Marseille in June.

They also take lessons learned from this challenging 10-race regatta, where the roguish winds were always tough to read, and the standard of boats in the 11-strong fleet was considerably higher than the previous year.

"If someone had said before the regatta that we would come away with a 10-point lead, we would have leapt at it. So to come away with a 20-point buffer is very unexpected, and fantastic," Barker said.

"The standard here was very high, so it makes it a tougher challenge for us to keep improving. To win this event is great, but there are still a lot of races — 40 to go — to defend our championship title.

"The biggest lesson we've learned here is consistency. We let ourselves down in the first couple of races, by making a lot of unforced mistakes."

He continued: "It's very easy when things aren't going well to start taking more high-risk options to make things right. But we chipped away each day and managed to reel off a very consistent second two-thirds of the regatta.

"You aren't going to win every race, and the standard is so high, you need to accept a third or fourth is quite a good result."

Claiming second place in the bruising opening race of the day was enough to seal the regatta victory with a race to spare.