Kelsey Durham came agonisingly close to pulling off a major upset on day two of the Bermuda Gold Cup in Hamilton Harbour on Wednesday.

The Bermudian helmsman led four-times regatta winner and defending champion Johnie Berntsson on the final run to the finish line but was just unable to hold off his Swedish rival.

“We fought it out in every race and just lost right at the end,” Durham told The Royal Gazette.

“It’s just our lack of match racing in the last four years that we haven’t done while these guys are doing it all the time.”

Durham seized the early advantage after Berntsson was tagged with a double penalty battling for the favoured end of the line in the pre-start.

The lead then swapped hands before the defending champion surged ahead on the final downwind leg. Durham battled on but was stopped dead in his tracks after losing his spinnaker while attempting to lay the finishing line.

The local sailor felt he should have been awarded two additional penalties after Berntsson appeared to have made contact with his boat on the short reach to the finish.

“We got another two penalties on Johnie and the jury said we never raised a flag so that’s why they didn’t make the call,” Durham said.

“But my tactician did raise the flag and they didn’t see it. His [Berntsson] spinnaker hit my backstay and my bow hit his stern on the downwind to the finish and I was on right of way both times. It was right at the end and he would have had to do a penalty right there.”

Durham was forced to make a crew change in the final race of the day after trimmer Nico Stefani was injured during the mishap with the spinnaker against Berntsson.

“Nico had the spinnaker sheet wrapped around his leg when it went into the water and pulled his leg into the winch,” Durham said.

“He is lucky he didn’t break it but he suffered a big bruise and the nurse didn’t let him sail again, so we had to bring in Joshua Greenslade.”

Durham, who managed one win in the round-robin stage of the regatta, is now hoping for better fortunes heading into the quarter-finals.

“Everybody sees now that our match racing is coming back and we are improving with the tactical part,” he said.

“We are fast and to be battling with Johnie Berntsson and Eric Monnin shows that we are a force to reckon with so we’ll see who we pair up with tomorrow and go from there.”

Berntsson topped the standings after the round-robin stage and is brimming with confidence heading into the quarter finals.

“Today was good racing,” he said. “We had strong winds at the beginning of racing and then it decreased a bit so I think we are getting into most of the conditions we can have.

“We didn’t really have the light wind conditions but I think that will come later in the week. It’s a good warm up to have the round robin and be in a good position out of that so looking forward to the quarter finals.”

Berntsson also handed out praise to Durham after their close battle late in the afternoon.

“He did a really good job and we love this guy, he’s a really nice guy,” he said.

“I know he really wanted to have a win against us. We started up with a double penalty in the pre-start so we had to take it from there. First we pulled one off and then we came back in the race and had to see how we can trick him and at the top mark we managed to get rid of our second penalty and came out just behind him.

Then we overtook him and had starboard advantage to him and that was a good one for us.”