Women pile on pressure

After a horror start Northland sailors Stephanie Hazard, Jenna Hansen and their Auckland crewmate Susannah Pyatt have bounced back at the pre-Olympic ISAF Sailing World Cup event Skandia Sail for Gold Regatta.

The women's match racing trio in Elliott 6s mastered the heavy conditions to win five of their six races in the repecharge round to power into the quarterfinals on the fourth day of sailing.

The Hazard-helmed boat had earlier just managed two wins out of nine races in the opening two days of competition but then started to turn their regatta around.

"We started the regatta pretty slow but we've built up momentum over the last three days. Today especially we had to come out strong to secure our spot in the quarterfinals," Hazard said.

"The conditions were tough, pretty wet and pretty cold, but it's just a case of keeping it simple and keeping it fast on the track."

The New Zealand crew completed the repecharge in first place with Spain's Tamara Echegoyen, Angela Pumariega and Sofia Toro also making it through to the quarterfinals.

The Gold Group was won convincingly by Russia's Ekaterina Skudina, Elena Oblova and Elena Siuzeva - who were unbeaten.

France's Claire Leroy was second and the USA's Anna Tunnicliffe finished third.

The horrendous weather forecast prompted race officials to begin the day one hour early with hopes of getting races in for every fleet, but this was not the case.

High winds cancelled racing for New Zealanders sailing the 2.4mR and Skud 18 Paralympic classes, the Star and Laser Radial silver fleet.

The Men's laser and boardsailing fleet also got two full races in, while the RS:X women, 49er and Finn, had only one.

In the Laser fleet, Kerikeri's Andy Maloney had a fantastic start to the day winning the first race but, as the breeze built up in the second race, he finished 11th. His more experienced rival, Andrew Murdoch - also from Kerikeri - placed eighth and fifth in the two gold fleet races. Maloney is one spot ahead of Murdoch in seventh place overall.

The other Kerikeri sailor at the event, Blair Tuke, crewing with Peter Burling in the 49er crew, had a fourth and seventh place to move up to 13th overall, one place behind Whangarei's Marcus Hansen and his crewman Josh Porebski, with the competition heating up for the top ten places in the gold medal fleet.

Racing will start one hour later overnight (NZ time), with hopes some of this weather system will ease to allow the last series' races before the medal round.