Hamilton Harbour settled its final eight on day three of the Bermuda Gold Cup, and the big names mostly took care of themselves.
Chris Poole (USA), Johnnie Berntsson (SWE), Pauline Courtois (FRA) and Eric Monnin (SUI) all fought through the repechage to join the quarter-final line-up. They've been joined by Christian Hamilton (GBR), Aurelien Pierroz (FRA), Oscar Engstrom (SWE) and Jeppe Borch (DEN), who qualified directly out of the round-robin stage.
Poole had made life hard for himself. He needed to win both of his final two flights just to keep his campaign alive, and did exactly that, beating the already-eliminated Martina Carlsson (SWE) and Allison Blecher (USA) to scrape through.
"We knew we had to win some matches and we won our first two but Pauline got the better of us in race three," Poole said. "We didn't have our phones, so we weren't really keeping tabs on the score, but we just needed to go out, sail well, work on the things we needed to work on and we knew the rest would come together."
Berntsson produced the standout result of the day. The Swede was the only sailor to go through the final day of the repechage unbeaten, winning all five of his matches to top the standings, a notable turnaround given he'd lost his first three races of the regatta. Three days on the water seem to have helped his crew find their rhythm.
"Having the third day in the regatta helps and our momentum is going up," Berntsson said. "We're doing less mistakes and the team have been growing together but the conditions today were a little more stable and the shifts were more predictable, which I think favoured us and we managed to pull off some good starts. It was not so randomised as the other two days, so we are really happy and ready for some quarters."
Courtois, the six-time women's match racing world champion, remains the only female skipper left in the regatta. Her Match in Pink crew needed a winner-takes-all finale against Sweden's Anna Östling, both arriving at that final flight on four wins apiece.
"It was very close, like every time with Anna," Courtois said. "I think we can still improve our technique level but we were happy with our sailing today."
Monnin finished level with Östling on four points but went through on the strength of his head-to-head win over her in the repechage. He looked genuinely relieved once he was back ashore and told the result.
"It's a big relief as we didn't really know on the water how this was going to turn out," Monnin said. "We knew it was going to be tight, so every match was tense, but we were able to improve and we're happy to be in the quarter-finals, but we definitely have some little adjustments to do in the pre-start."
The quarter-final draw is set:
1. Christian Hamilton v Eric Monnin 2. Aurelien Pierroz v Pauline Courtois 3. Oscar Engstrom v Chris Poole 4. Jeppe Borch v Johnnie Berntsson
