Alex Maloney and Molly Meech had been looking forward to stronger winds at Kiel Week all regatta and it played into their hands last night (NZT) as the Olympic 49erFX silver medallists climbed to the top of the standings after three days of racing.
The pair scored two wins, a second and a sixth to open an eight-point lead on the British combination of Charlotte Dobson and Saskia Tidey.
The news wasn't quite so good for fellow Kiwis Josh Porebski and Trent Rippey, who started the day in first but dropped to fifth overall. They struggled in the day's first two races, finishing 18th and 21st in the 25-strong gold fleet, and followed it up with an 11th and a ninth after making some alterations to their boat.
"It was a pretty tough day for us," Rippey admitted. "In the first race we had a bad start and struggled to recover. After that, we followed it with another bad race which was a bit of a shame. We came back and changed some things on the boat and managed to get it going fast again."
Porebski and Rippey are only five points off a podium position but they had ambitions of winning the regatta and the top two combinations - Australians David Gilmour and Joel Turner and the Polish team of Lukasz Przybytek and Pawel Kołodziński - have opened a handy lead on the rest of the fleet.
