Joey Newton is embarking on his sixth America’s Cup campaign, something he could barely imagine when he started with a fledgling Young Australia challenge in Auckland in 1999.

Newton and Jimmy Spithill, his skipper at Oracle Team USA, met while racing against each other as teenagers.

When Spithill needed crew for a regatta in Italy, he called Newton, and the two have moved in lockstep ever since.

Newton got an early start with Syd Fischer’s Young Australia team for the 1999-2000 America’s Cup in Auckland, and he has never left the scene, moving along with Spithill through the OneWorld Challenge (2002-03) and Luna Rossa Challenge (2004-07) campaigns.

As a trimming assistant aboard the trimaran USA 17, he won the America’s Cup in his fourth attempt in 2010.

He hoisted the Auld Mug for a second time with Oracle Team USA in San Francisco in 2013.

“It’s been pretty cool living through the Version 5 America’s Cup Class boats, then the great big trimaran, and then the AC72,” Newton said.

“And now we have these new boats which are so much faster and more efficient and so much harder to sail, so it’s a much more athletic boat than what it used to be in the past.”

Away from the cup Newton won the Fastnet Race and Round Island Race aboard the maxi yacht Stealth in 2001.

With Spithill he has also won the 2005 Match Racing World Championship and the Bermuda Gold Cup, and in 2010, the duo were on the team that captured the RC44 World Championship.