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There were encouraging signs from New Zealand's top 49erFX combinations at the world championships in Nova Scotia today, with both crews firmly entrenched in the top 10 after the second day of action.
Jo Aleh and Molly Meech, along with Alex Maloney and Olivia Hobbs, punched out a consistent series of top-10 results in their three races today to sit fifth and sixth respectively in the 36-strong fleet.
Both are new combinations this year, and for Aleh it's an entirely new boat after the two-time women's 470 Olympic medallist returned to international competition after a five-year break.
"We had a decent day," Aleh said. "We were just happy to be consistent and do what we said we were going to do.
"We still have a long way to go [as a combination] and we have moments of things working but we are happy to be making progress. The aim for us here was to show we have some potential, which hopefully we do, and to learn from the racing."
They will get plenty of that this week, with three more days of fleet racing before the top 10 fight it out in the double-points medal race.
Maloney and Hobbs will be aiming to be in that race and put together the third-best combined score of the day in the 49erFX to jump 10 places in the overall standings.
"It definitely feels like things are clicking around the race course," Maloney said. "We are still making a few mistakes which we will look to minimise in the coming days. There’s lots of racing to go but we can take some confidence from the results and will look to build from here."
Conditions in Nova Scotia were a lot friendlier than they were on day one, when multiple capsizes and gear breakages occurred. It meant all three fleets completed three races.
New Zealand's Nacra 17 combination of Micah Wilkinson and Erica Dawson couldn't quite fire but are still well within touch with the main contenders in eighth. Italy's Ruggero Tita and Caterina Banti, who have set the standard all year, continue to excel and have so far won all six races.
"Unfortunately, we just couldn’t quite execute any starts and that made it hard for us to stick to our strategy, so we had a challenging day," Wilkinson said. "It’s not all bad. I think we saved a lot of points. We were pretty buried in a few races so it could have been a lot worse. It was a tough day but there's plenty of racing to go."
Logan Dunning Beck and Oscar Gunn are the best placed of the three Kiwi crews in the 49er in 15th overall after recording three top-10 results today.
The leaderboard is very congested - Dunning Beck and Gunn are only 12 points off third - so there's likely to be plenty of movement throughout the rest of the regatta. The 49ers have one more day of qualifying before the top half move into gold fleet.
Results and standings after day 2 of the 49er, 49erFx and Nacra 17 World Championships in Nova Scotia:
49er (65 boats)
1st: Bart Lambriex / Floris van de Werken (NED) (12) 2 1 1 - 4 points
2nd: Sime Fantela / Mihovil Fantela (CRO) 3 2 1 (5) - 6 pts
3rd: Diego Botin / Florian Trittel Paul (ESP) 6 1 (7) 3 - 10 pts
15th: Logan Dunning Beck / Oscar Gunn (NZL) (9) 7 9 6 - 22 pts
25th: Isaac McHardie / William McKenzie (NZL) (22) 5 4 22 - 31 pts
49th: Sam Bacon / Henry Gautrey (NZL) 13 20 (30) 26 - 59 pts
49erFX (36 boats)
1st: Odile van Aanholt / Annette Duetz (NED) 2 1 1 3 2 (5) - 9 pts
2nd: Vilma Bobeck / Rebecca Netzler (SWE) 5 3 2 (7) 1 3 - 14 pts
3rd: Tamara Echegoyen / Paula Barcelo (ESP) 4 2 3 (24) 4 4 - 17 pts
5th: Jo Aleh / Molly Meech (NZL) 9 (20) 8 8 3 10 - 38 pts
6th: Alex Maloney / Olivia Hobbs (NZL) 10 (26) 13 4 7 9 - 43 pts
Nacra 17 (34 boats)
1st: Ruggero Tita / Caterina Banti (ITA) (1) 1 1 1 1 1 - 5 pts
2nd: Gianluigi Ugolini / Maria Giubilei (ITA) 3 3 (9) 4 2 2 - 14 pts
3rd: Sinem Kurtbay / Akseli Keskinen (FIN) 5 2 3 (14) 7 6 - 23 pts
8th: Micah Wilkinson / Erica Dawson (NZL) 7 8 2 9 8 (11) - 34 pts
Pic: Jo Aleh and Molly Meech are fifth after the second day of the world championships. Photo: Sailing Energy.
