14 Oct 2015

470 crews improve at World Champs

7:38 am on 14 October 2015

The New Zealand crew of Jo Aleh and Olivia Powrie have improved to fourth after the second day of racing at the 470 sailing world champs in Israel.

Jo Aleh and Polly Powrie on Guanabara bay, 2015.

Jo Aleh and Polly Powrie on Guanabara bay, 2015. Photo: Yachting NZ

The Olympic champions managed a 10th and a 5th in today's two races.

They're nine points behind the leaders from Poland with the defending champions from Austria second.

In the men's competition Paul Snow-Hansen and Dan Wilcox are 12th.

"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," Aleh said.

"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 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."

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