Tauranga 49er sailor Peter Burling and crew mate Blair Tuke sit fourth overall in the gold fleet competition at the ISAF Sailing World Championships being contested in Perth.

The 49er fleet swapped its rest day on Thursday for one race, with the NZL sailing pair finishing third.

Tom Ashley leads the Men's RS:X Gold Fleet upwind. Photo: OceanImages.

They sit in fourth overall and are tied in points for third – only one point behind second.

'We just need to keep knocking off good performances,” says Peter.

The 49ers are racing early Friday at 9am (Perth time) in the centre course of Bathers Bay.
The Men's RS:X class saw some topsy-turvy results on Thursday in their three races, again due to a strange breeze.

Both JP Tobin and Tom Ashley had results with scores under five and over 20.

JP now sits in the favoured position of seventh overall and Tom has slipped back to ninth.

Three of the famous five men's Laser sailors are within the top 15 overall – this was a big climb up the leaderboard, especially for Andy Maloney and Mike Bullot.

Andrew Murdoch received a second yellow flag on Thursday, which rendered him out of the first race.

Penalty aside, Andrew had two good races and still remains within the top 10 in the overall standings of the men's Laser in eighth.

Today the men's RS:X and Lasers have a rest day and on Saturday they have their final two races before Sunday's medal races for the top 10 competitors.

Friday and Saturday have two races per day for the women's 470 and three for the men's 49er.

Perth 2011 ISAF Sailing World Championships
New Zealand's current standings

49er
4th Gold Fleet - Peter Burling and Blair Tuke (3)
11th Silver Fleet- Marcus Hansen and Josh Porebski (18)
13th Bronze Fleet- Chris Burgess and Rohan Swanson (12)

Men's Laser
8th Gold Fleet- Andrew Murdoch (50DNF, 7)
14th Gold Fleet- Andy Maloney (14, 3)
15st Gold Fleet- Mike Bullot (38, 10)
31st Gold Fleet- Sam Meech (23, 42)
45th Gold Fleet- Josh Junior (42, 41)
34th Silver Fleet- Tom Saunders (50DNC, 11)

RS:X Men's
7th Gold Fleet- JP Tobin (3, 24, 2)
9th Gold Fleet- Tom Ashley (20, 10, 4)
6th Silver Fleet - Antonio Cozzolino (15, 5, 4)
28th Silver Fleet- Carl Evans (14, 28, 21)

470 Women
6th Jo Aleh and Olivia Powrie (7, 4, 14, 25, 7, 1)
43rd Vicki Francis and Erica Dawson (32, 43, 43, 44, 44, 40)