By Suzanne McFadden
Hundreds of the world's best sailors are filling Auckland waterways this week.
First there were the America's Cup challengers on the Hauraki Gulf. Yesterday they were joined by 22 crews jostling to be world champions of the junior 470 class.
Today, 10 world champions and twice as many Olympic medallists
line up in the Sail Auckland regatta on the Waitemata Harbour.
More than 200 sailors from 20 nations are competing in the regatta for Olympic classes.
Among the current and former world champions are rival Australian Tornado skippers John Forbes and Mitch Booth, Dutch Europe class sailors Margriet Matthysse and Carolijn Brouwer, Finn class yachtsmen Mateusz Kusznierewicz of Poland and Belgian Sebastian Godefroid, and Olympic gold medallist in women's boardsailing, Lee Lai Shan, of Hong Kong.
New Zealand's boardsailing world champions Barbara Kendall, Aaron McIntosh and Bruce Kendall lead a strong local representation in the Royal Sun Alliance-sponsored regatta.
Sailors have come from Scandanavia, Europe, Britain, Canada, Asia and Fiji for four days of racing. Most of them have come here from the world championships in Melbourne a fortnight ago.
The junior 470 worlds already have a Kiwi world champion crew in their fleet - Aucklanders Matt Davies and Kevin Borrows, who won the double-handed world youth title in South Africa last month.
Polish crew Stanczyk Tomasz and Jakubiak Tomasz, the defending champions, had back-to-back wins on the first day.
The top Kiwis are Rebecca Murdoch and Alesha Thorpe in sixth place.
