The announcement yesterday that Great Britain plans to enter a team in the next America’s Cup has created a buzz around the London Boat Show. I think it is fantastic that Sir Keith Mills, who is so passionate about sailing and has a great track record in business, is willing to make a stab at pulling a British side together.

It is no easy task, as the organisers of the aborted British bid for this year’s cup know. Just to be in with a chance, Mills will need to raise upwards of £50 million and that’s probably a conservative estimate. It’s not just about the money, it is the quality of team you create and the structures you build to ensure that the money isn’t wasted.

Team New Zealand suffered from poor management and decision-making last time, which explains in part why they lost 5-0 to Alinghi. This time the team, of which I am a part, are much better prepared.

There are plenty of talented Britons working in the cup this year who Mills will probably want to approach — not only on the sailing side, but in boat design as well. Iain Percy has Olympic experience and is working with the Italian +39 side, while Andy Claughton, the British design head at Team New Zealand, would be an asset to any side.

It’s always been an ambition of mine to race for Great Britain, but like all the other sailors in this year’s America’s Cup, my mind is fully focused on racing with Emirates Team New Zealand in Valencia.

The big moment for us in the autumn was the launching of our second and final boat, NZL92. It’s not a romantic name, but we hope it will wrest the trophy away from Alinghi, of Switzerland.

Preparing a boat like this for the America’s Cup is like tuning a racing car; we were on the water for six to eight hours a day, for four to five days a week, but that was only the beginning of our work. Each time the boat came back in, a new batch of performance results was put into our database and we had to analyse where the boat was performing well and where it wasn’t.

There will be more testing in New Zealand throughout February, then both our boats will be brought to Spain for five or six weeks of training before the Louis Vuitton challenge. That is the final elimination contest between 11 teams to decide who will compete for the cup against Alinghi in June. It is gruelling, with round-robin head-to-heads and then quarter-finals and so on. Of the 11 teams, we are the favourites but we expect a tough challenge from BMW Oracle, the American entry, and Luna Rossa, of Italy.

In September, I skippered a five-man team in San Francisco and beat Ed Baird, the Alinghi skipper, 3-1 in the finals. This was my first win on the World Match Racing Tour and to beat our big rival was very satisfying.

I also won the Maxi Boat World Championships in Porto Cervo, Sardinia, on Alfa Romeo Shockwave. These “super Maxis” are awesome machines, 110 feet long with a massive sail area and canting keel, immensely powerful and a real buzz to drive.

Despite all this fun on big boats, I am looking forward to getting back into my Finn and having a crack at the Beijing Olympics. It will be a challenge as I have been away from the boat for a long time and I face some stiff competition just to qualify, but I won the Olympic test regatta in Qingdao in the summer and have just got some sponsorship from JPMorgan Asset Management, so am optimistic.

I’ve been keeping my eye on the Velux 5 Oceans solo race, as well, which is fascinating. The drama with Alex Thomson snapping his keel and Mike Golding putting aside ambition to go back and rescue him was amazing. It was great that Golding should get appointed OBE in the New Year’s Honours List.

A solo circumnavigation is something I would love to do at some point but there is so much to try to achieve. At least, to judge from Sir Robin Knox-Johnston’s terrific efforts at 67, I have another 40 years or so in which to get round to it.