KEY POINTS:
New Zealand yachtie Hamish Pepper can do no wrong in the Star class, winning his third regatta in six months.
Pepper and his coach Australian David Giles won the highly sought after Bacardi Cup in Miami on Saturday, beating 74 teams from 23 countries. The win follows victories
in the world championships in San Francisco in October and the North American championships in Miami in November.
Pepper and Giles finished the six-race regatta with 15 points claiming a first, two seconds, a third and a seventh.
Sweden's Freddy Loof and Anders Ekstrom finished second with 18 points and Poland's Mateusz Kusznierewicz and Dominik Zyckel with 23 points.
Going into the final race, Pepper and Giles topped the leaderboard but were just six points ahead of the Polish pair.
"We had a good first beat and were second to the top mark ahead of Freddy [Loof] and Mateusz [Kusznierewicz]," Pepper said.
"As the race went on the wind got very light and shifty, so it could have gone either way. We kept our lead down to the bottom mark but with a change of wind direction Freddy caught up and passed us. We were still in second and for him to win the regatta he needed to put eight boats between us. So we were still in a comfortable position.
"On the last run it got even lighter and the boats behind us caught up with some passing, making the last beat to the finish very tense. We ended up finishing seventh with Freddy finishing third. Mateusz was very deep in the pack so was never an issue.
"To win a Bacardi Cup is special. [Giles] has seen so many other people drink from that cup ... now it's our turn," he added.
The other New Zealand crew competing, Rohan Lord and Miles Addy, finished 25th.
Pepper, who is now No 1 in the ISAF world rankings, usually competes with Carl Williams. But Williams is with America's Cup syndicate BMW Oracle Racing and is tied up until the end of the Cup in early July. He will then rejoin Pepper for the world championships in Portugal.
The championships are the first chance teams have to qualify their country a place in the class for the Beijing Olympics.
Giles will continue to sail with Pepper until Williams returns.
The next event for the pair is the Expert Olympic classes regatta on Lake Garda in Italy starting on Wednesday.