Kiwi crews improve in tricky conditions

2015 470 World Championships – Kiwi crews improve in tricky conditions

Day two of racing has just wrapped up at the 2015 470 World Champs underway now in Haifa, Israel featuring both NZL Sailing Team 470 crews. Both managed to improve their overall standing after today’s racing, despite the day being described as patchy and challenging.

Lying 7th at the end of the opening day Jo Aleh and Polly Powrie are up into 4th after placing 10th and 5th in their two races today. Meanwhile Paul Snow-Hansen and Daniel Willcox (pictured above) took a race win today and have climbed to 12th place in the men’s fleet improving three positions.

Jo Aleh describes the day; “Rather tricky sailing today. We made things about as hard for ourselves as we could with some truly terrible first beats, but we held our composure and had some great catch ups.”

“We ended up with a 10th and a 5th, not a great day, but from where we were half-way up the first leg each time it still felt pretty good to finish with those two results.”

Aleh, who is popular with the Israeli locals due to family her family connection to the nation, says that Haifa is providing unique challenges as a sailing venue;

“It’s going to be a long tough regatta by the looks of it! 40 boats and light winds with a nasty choppy wave state, makes for tricky sailing and I am going to guess some rather big score-lines by the end of the week.”

Ahead on the leader board are overnight leaders Agnieszka Skrzypulec and Irmina Mrozek Gliszczynska of Poland who hold firm in the lead, able to discard their 36th from race four. Defending World Champions Lara Vadlau and Jola Ogar (AUT) up their game to score a 2nd and a 1st and accelerate to second overall. Hannah Mills and Saskia Clark (GBR) maintain third place on the scoreboard.

The kiwi Olympic champions won’t be changing their usual game plan. “We will just go and try againtomorrow, and see if we can keep the overall number of the day decreasing.”

Meanwhile the men also sailed two races and now have five on the score board. Kiwis Paul Snow-Hansen and Daniel Willcox opened the day with a bullet, the followed that with an 11th in the second race of the day to lift their overall position to 12th.

2015 470 World Championships
NZL Sailing Team’s current standings

4th Jo Aleh and Polly Powrie (2, 17, 10, 5)
12th Paul Snow-Hansen and Daniel Willcox (9, 4, 10, 1, 11)
Full results here

Links:

Regatta website
NZL Sailing Team sailor profiles
NZL Sailing Team on Facebook

What else is on this year?

New Zealand’s Olympic 470 sailors aren’t the only ones yet to contest their 2015 World Championship titles with the 49er, 49erFX,RS:X, Finn and Laser Radial classes also scheduled to sail their respective World Champs within the next two months.

2015 49er and 49erFX World Championships
Dates: 16-21 November 2015
Venue: Buenos Aries, Argentina
Featuring: Peter Burling and Blair Tuke, Alexandra Maloney and Molly Meech and a handful of up and coming kiwi 49er crews including Logan Dunning-Beck and Jack Simpson, Markus Somerville and Aaron Hume-Merry, Isaac McHardie and Trent Rippey

2015 RS:X World Championships
Dates: 19-24 October 2015
Venue: Al Mussanah, Oman
Featuring: Natalia Kosinska and Jon Paul Tobin

2015 Finn Gold Cup
Dates: 24-29 November 2015
Venue: Takapuna, Auckland, New Zealand
Featuring: Andrew Murdoch, Josh Junior and plenty more local and international sailors

Laser Radial World Championships
Dates: 20-26 November 2015
Venue: Al Mussanah, Oman
Featuring: Sara Winther, Susannah Pyatt

ends

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