Local hopeful Kelsey Durham vented his frustration at the officiating after being eliminated from the Bermuda Gold Cup yesterday.

The Royal Hamilton Amateur Dinghy Club helmsman took issue with a string of calls that went against him in a 3-0 defeat in his quarter-final match against defending champion and three-times winner Johnie Berntsson.

“I had a lot of unfair calls towards me from the jury,” Durham told The Royal Gazette. “I am very disappointed because we sailed well and the crew did an amazing job. But just bad calls.

“It’s like a referee in football, just no VAR. If they could have VAR and go back and look they would’ve overturned every call they made against me.

“I was disappointed with the calls they were making, saying they did not see our flags and stuff like that. It would’ve been a whole different outcome for our morale and everything else.”

Berntsson, of Sweden, was delighted to progress to the semi-final and keep his title defence on track but acknowledged how close the contest had been.

“We are happy to get a 3-0 on the scoreboard which didn’t really reflect the race,” he said. “The last race was actually really tight so we are happy to be there.

“It’s always a process but the racing actually really started today. The round robin was more like getting a feel of everything but now we need to push our best.”

Berntsson coped better than his Bermudian rival in the lighter, shifty conditions.

“It was very shifty, lighter and a little more big things coming that were deciders. It was not that you could catch one, work for that, catch the other,” he added.

“Sometimes you need to have to decider and that was hard to tell when you were rounding the bottom mark to know which one was going to be the decider so we are happy with how it turned out.

“I think we did most of it right but there were some tricky decisions to make.”

The number two seed is happy with his team’s progress but concedes there is more work to be done if he and his fellow colleagues are to retain the coveted King Edward VII Gold Cup.

“It’s not done until it’s done but we have a good feeling,” he said. “We have to pick so we are just checking out who we think is the right one to pick which could be an advantage and also risky, you never know.”

Also advancing to the semi-final were top seed Chris Poole, third seed Eric Monnin and eighth seed Nick Egnot-Johnson.

Poole came away with a convincing 3-0 win over fellow American David Hood, Switzerland’s Monnin beat Gavin Brady, also of the United States, 3-1 while New Zealand’s Johnson prevailed 3-0 against Australian Cole Tapper.

“We are really happy,” Poole said.

“Today we had some objectives that we set out on how we wanted to sail the boat and work on a few things that we feel like we hit all those nails right on the head.

“We’re really doing quite good heading into the next stage so we will see who Johnie [Berntsson] decides to race and then we’ll get whoever is left.”

Monnin was equally delighted to secure his spot in the last four.

“I am feeling really good because we had a hard quarter-final with Gavin Brady,” he said.

“He is always a strong opponent so we knew that we had to show our best today and we are very, very happy the way it went and the way we sailed so that’s good.”

Johnson achieved a milestone having advanced this far in the regatta for the first time.

“It’s an amazing feeling to be going through to the semi-final,” he said. “This is our first time in the semi-final at the Bermuda Gold Cup.

“The boys did a really good job picking some great shifts, getting some great starts and sailing fast, so I think we are finally starting to piece it together and figure out the boats.”