Day three of the Red Bull Youth America’s Cup has finished up with a runaway leader. Zhik’s NZL Sailing Team with ETNZ has smashed both races.

The textbook performance from Peter Burling and the NZL Sailing Team with ETNZ crew earned them the maximum 20 points on offer on day three of the regatta, while mixed results from the other nine teams helped to increase the differential on the points table.

Furthermore a decision from the Jury released yesterday afternoon saw the NZL Sailing Team awarded redress for race two (sailed on day one) after a malfunction with their on board penalty light forced the crew to slow their boat for longer than necessary following a boundary infringement. The team’s result for that race was adjusted giving them an extra two points.

Burling and his crew benefitted from two excellent starts; “We felt the angle was pretty good off the pin, and all the other boats were setting up really high both times so we thought we’d cruise down to where there was no traffic and get a good angle and that worked out really well for us both times,” explains the skipper Peter Burling. 

He continues; “We had a chat last night about the boat handling and the little things that were going wrong, so it was really good to get that nice and polished for today.”

Despite stepping out a nice lead the team are aware they must remain focussed with another day of racing to come including the heavily weighted double points race eight.

“More of the same,” says Burling of tomorrow’s game plan. “We’re just trying to take each race as it comes. We’re really happy with just chipping away and being consistent.”

Red Bull Youth America’s Cup standings after day three

1 NZL Sailing with ETNZ - 50
2 Full Metal Jacket Racing - 39
3 American Youth Sailing Force - 39
4 Swedish Youth Challenge - 38
5 ROFF/Cascais Sailing Team - 35
6 Team Tilt - 33
7 Next World Energy - 32
8 Objective Australia - 30
9 All In Racing - 28
10 USA45 Racing - 11