Tauranga sailor Peter Burling and Blair Tuke triumphed at the 2015 49er European Championship Regatta after being relegated to third place on the second-to-last day in Portugal.

A protest from the pair over a mark rounding incident saw them disqualified – an incident which handed the Australian crew of Nathan Outteridge and Ian Jensen a five-point lead.

Peter Burling and Blair Tuke in action. Photo: Jesus Renedo/Sailing Energy.

But the final day offered plenty of opportunity for redemption, with three finals races and a medal race in the schedule.

Racing off the coast of Porto on large Atlantic swells, Peter and Blair let their sailing speak for itself, starting the day with a second place to set the tone. This was followed by a win before another second spot in the third race.

By then the time limit for a medal race had expired, but for Burling and Tuke it was a formality following victory in the fleet racing by 24 points.

The victory marks an unbroken run of 18 regatta wins for the pair who have been invincible since taking the Olympic silver medal at London 2012 behind arch-rivals Outteridge and Jensen.

'We're just so stoked to have come back and won the way we did,” says Blair.

'We didn't feel affected by the disqualification. If anything, maybe Nathan and Goobs [Outteridge and Jensen] would have rather been seven points behind at the beginning of the day, so they could have gone in with the same attitude as we did.

'We came out firing and it was nice to get the job done with three nice races.”

'It was difficult,” he adds. 'You had to be able to hold your lane on port and be in the right spot on the start and we did it in the first race and that gave us a good gauge on how to do it.

'The boat was going fast all day, we sailed it smart and we had an eagerness to win.”

Germany's Justus Schmidt and Max Boehme took the silver medal, while John Pink and Stuart Bithell (GBR) took bronze, pushing Nathan Outteridge and Ian Jensen (AUS) out of the podium placings into fourth.

Peter and Blair now go to Portsmouth for the America's Cup World Series with Emirates Team New Zealand.

Following that they re-join the NZL Sailing Team contingent selected to compete at the 2015 Rio Test Event in August.