New Zealand crews made solid starts to their ISAF world championships campaigns in Perth with all of the elite sailing team in action grabbing a top-10 finish yesterday.
Paul Snow-Hansen and Jason Saunders in the men's 470 class were the pick of the bunch, winning their opening race in the blue fleet and finishing seventh in the next to end day one in fifth.
The women's match racing squad of Stephanie Hazard, Jenna Hansen and Susannah Pyatt continued their good form with four wins and a loss on their second day of racing to be well placed nearing the completion of round one. They race America's Anna Tunnicliffe, who won gold in the Laser Radial at the 2008 Olympics, on Wednesday before the top 10 teams from both pools square off in round two.
Dan Slater had a decent first day in the highly-competitive Finn class but lost ground on the leaders. He finished his first race of the world championships (also called the Finn Gold Cup) with a solid fifth and followed that up with an 11th to be 13th overall.
The Finn class has 77 entries from 33 nations, which is the strongest and deepest fleet assembled for the class in many years. The depth of talent is very strong, with 22 former Olympians, four Olympic medallists and four former world champions on the start line, including triple gold medallist Ben Ainslie.
