Olympic Games: Charlotte Dobson, Luke Patience and Anna Burnet in Day 5 action

Dobson, 35, and her crewmate Saskia Tidey topped the standings after two wins and a sixth place from the first day's races on Tuesday – and a trio of solid finishes on day two leaves the pair still at the top of the overall standings.

And there were solid starts to the first races in the series for the Helensburgh and Lomond area's other Olympians on Wednesday – Luke Patience, from Rhu, and team-mate Chris Grube in the men's 470 class, and Shandon's Anna Burnet and partner John Gimson in the mixed Nacra 17 multihull category.

Saskia and Tidey were fourth in race four of the series, second in race five and fifth in race six, leaving them well on course to achieve something special – if the remaining series races, on Friday and Saturday, go to plan.

With a third and an eighth place in the first two races, Patience and Grube are sitting fourth overall in the 470 class, though they did have a bit of a fright when a part of their mast failed and they had a quick dash to shore to fix it between races.

On their first Olympic appearance, Burnet, 28, and Gimson lie fourth after the first three races with a scorecard of (7)-5-2.

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After the dust settled on Wednesday's races, Dobson said: “These boats are just epic to sail in in those big waves and when you delete from your brain the fact that it’s the Olympics and these are big waves and capsizes are expensive, they’re just the most phenomenal boats to sail.

"I think what we did quite well today was just focussing on doing all of our little processes.

“We call Sas the air hostess as we’re going down the massive waves because she’s in charge of the kite control. So it was quite a good day on Tidey Airlines today.

“There were times where it was definitely not boring, but I think we managed to keep doing our basics pretty well.

"And on a day like that with the big sea state, having three good counters is a really good day so we’re pretty happy.

“We’re feeling good. I think what’s really played out over the last couple of days for us is we’ve put so much work in the previous years to this of being really pernickety with the processes.

"Sometimes at the time they felt a bit over the top and a bit noisy, but what we’re feeling now is that we are ourselves on the water.

"We’re sailing the same boat that we’ve sailed for the last four years, we’re the same team, the same processes so it does feel really comfy. We’re leaning and playing on that a little bit at the moment.

“Looking forward to a rest tomorrow and then we’ll be back at it the next day.”

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Reflecting on the opening day's 470 class action, Patience said: “We had a fairly severe gear failure that we had to come and check wasn’t about to demast us, but we couldn’t fix it.

"We were wounded soldiers in the second race, the boat was bleeding and we had to go harder.

“It was mostly ups today though really. We’ve done six beats, we had one that was a bit below par, that we didn’t pull through boats on but goodness, it’s easy to get honed in on one beat that didn’t go as well but we had five good beats. Always good runs. I mean we were on fire today.

“We had to deal with a bit of adversity that others didn’t, and that’s sport. Hopefully that’s the bad luck out of the way.

“This will be our last regatta in the 470. It’s a bit emotional, a forced end to the journey and end of an era.

"We enjoy the big stage, we enjoy the regattas that mean more. So having something like this as the last one together in the 470 is just another bit of fuel in our fire to really go hell for leather.

"So we’re mad for it and we’ll drop the bow and rip our way around that ocean for the next week."

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Looking back on her first day of Olympic action, Burnet said: “I was pretty nervous but just really excited to get started, be able to breathe and to get into the normal routine of the sailing and forget about everything else.

“Everyone had the extra year, it’s just about how you used it. I think we used it wisely but because there were no competitions there wasn’t really any opportunity to check in with the rest of the fleet.

"And for a number of reasons, with Brexit and Covid, we weren’t able to mix in with other teams, so we were locked in with our own training group of five – the Italians, the Austrians and the Argentinians – and I think luckily our group seems to be going quick.”

Patience and Burnet are both back in action on Thursday, while Dobson enjoys a rest day prior to the resumption of 49erFX action on Friday.