Sailing: Kiwi pair climb World Cup standings

Josh Porebski and Trent Rippey had gear failure issues on day two. Photo / Sailing Energy, World Sailing

Alex Maloney and Molly Meech put aside their first day frustration to climb the leaderboard at the 49erFX World Cup final in Santander yesterday.

The Olympic silver medallists sat in the unfamiliar position of 13th in the 15-boat fleet after day one. It was an inflated position after their boat was deemed underweight when measured before competition started, meaning they copped a 50 per cent penalty to their day one scores.

Maloney and Meech won the first race of day two and backed it up with a seventh and fifth to sit on 37 points and eighth overall at the invitation-only regatta.

Leaders Charlotte Dobson and Saskia Tidey of Great Britain have 16 points but the top six teams are all within six points of each other.

The Kiwis are competing in their first major regatta since last year's Rio Olympics and are keen to continue to move up the points ladder.

"We have a few more days of fleet racing, so there are plenty of races to go and we are looking forward to getting back out there [today]," Meech said.

"We started off with a win [yesterday] which was a really cool way to start the day. Unfortunately, we had a few up and down races [after that] and a few things didn't go our way."

The skiff fleets competed close to shore yesterday in 8-12 knots, with a strong tide making conditions tricky.

The 49er crew of Josh Porebski and Trent Rippey had some issues of their own, breaking a traveller in their first race of the day, but banked a couple of good scores to keep them in contention.

"In our first race, we were going all right and then had a breakage with our traveller," Porebski said. "One side broke, so that slowed us down on that tack."

The pair, who on current form are New Zealand's top 49er crew, with Olympic champions Peter Burling and Blair Tuke involved in the America's Cup, are seventh overall, 13 points behind leaders Lukasz Przybytek and Pawel Kolodzinski of Poland.

"We want to have a shot at the win at the end of the week," Rippey said. "We have been more consistent and putting some good scores on the board and minimising mistakes and keeping the big scores off the scoreboard."