West Mersea’s Saskia Clark will head into the third day of the 470 women’s Olympic sailing sitting in second place, but only thanks to some quick thinking during a dramatic four race.


Clark and helm Hannah Mills opened the day with a fourth position in their first race to stay top of the overall standings.


And they looked well set for another good finish in the day’s second race after surging into a commanding lead.


However, the British duo suddenly started to slow down as Clark struggled to fix a broken gear mechanism.


She said: “As soon as we called it that we weren’t going to fix it Hannah made the call that we just needed to make sure we didn’t muck up on all the things that we could still do well, and make the right decisions, even though we couldn’t go that fast.”


With that slower pace, Clark and Mills were able to continue and managed to secure sixth to leave them two points behind New Zealand’s Jo Aleh and Olivia Powrie in the overall standings.


Mills added: “It was all about damage limitation and we just wanted to grind out another result as best we could and we did that so we’re still in the hunt.”


The third day of the women’s 470 competition will be on Sunday, ahead of a rest day on Monday.