Bermuda qualified for the next round of the Star Sailors League Gold Cup today after some pulsating racing in Gran Canaria, Spain.

The Privateers headed by Rockal Evans got off to a rocky start in Fleet 3 with last-place finishes in the first two races, but recovered remarkably with a victory on Sunday to get back into contention before clinching a top-two place on a stunning final day of racing.

Bermuda finished level on 12 points with fleet favourites Antigua & Barbuda, but were given the nod because of their superior performance in the final race when points counted double.

Fleet winners were Malaysia, who had Tengku Amir Shah, the Crown Prince of Selangor, in attendance.

Ukraine, the fourth team in the fleet, saw any chance of progress stifled when they had to withdraw before the end of the first leg after mechanical breakdown on their SSL47.

That left Bermuda, Antigua and Malaysia to battle for two spots.

Evans came into the day full of confidence after the Privateers pulled themselves from the doldrums on Sunday.

“We had two really frustrating first days,” he said on Sunday. “We had some really good moments of brilliance, but our mistakes outweighed our good moments. Today was like a textbook; we nailed our tactics around the racecourse, we had good boat speed, in phase with the shifts and a few different tweaks that we debriefed about yesterday, what the other teams were doing.

“We had a little moment at the last top mark, after the spreader mark, where Malaysia got really close, but we were very confident in our boat speed downwind, because we walked away from the fleet on the first downwind leg, and we just did the same things to get the boat speed back up and just sailed away from them.

“It's definitely winner-takes-all tomorrow. Right after our finish today, I looked at the boats finishing behind us and I was like ‘this is perfect’. We needed them to finish in that order, so we’re all bunched together for the last race. And I made the team aware of that and everybody's hungry to get to tomorrow and do the same thing that we did today — we definitely have the momentum.”

And so it proved today.

Approaching the end of the first leg, it was a head-to-head showdown between Antigua and Malaysia, rounding the first mark separated by only seven seconds. But after a penalty called by Malaysia, Antigua were forced to perform a 360-degree turn. This setback knocked “The Rum Runners” from the lead to second place, and then eventually third behind Bermuda.

By the end of the third mark, the race dynamics shifted dramatically. Bermuda, in a stunning manoeuvre, overtook Malaysia, with Antigua trailing by 400 metres.

Malaysia recovered to outsprint Bermuda down the final stretch, but for Evans and Co it was job done.

All was not lost for Antigua, as they and Chile, the third-placed team from Fleet 2, advanced as lucky losers.

The other qualifiers are Tahiti, Slovenia, Lithuania, South Africa, Portugal and Estonia.

The ten qualifiers will join Austria, Bahrain, Finland, Hungary, Croatia, Israel, Canada and Japan in the 1/16 finals from Thursday to November 19.

The round that follows introduces the top 16 ranked nations in the world, from November 21, with the final set for December 3.