Bermuda's Olympic skipper Peter Bromby and American skipper Ken Read from Newport, Rhode Island, each finished with six wins and no losses yesterday after two intense days of match race sailing on Hamilton Harbour.

They head the group of eight unseeded skippers going through to the championship round of the Colorcraft Gold Cup that starts tomorrow.

Yesterday's group of eight will join seven seeded skippers already guaranteed places in the championship round of the annual match racing championship hosted by the Royal Bermuda Yacht Club. The event is the third regatta on this year's Swedish Match Grand Prix Sailing Tour.

A wild card seeded place will be decided today when Marcus Wieser from Germany and Marten Hedlund from Sweden, each of whom finished fifth in the two groups competing yesterday, will sail a best-of-three series.

Light and puffy southerly winds that were always under ten knots, tried the patience of the international skippers and crews as they sailed 21 separate matches on the harbour in front of the Royal Bermuda Yacht Club.

Bromby won most of his races with ease but faced his toughest challenge in his final race of the day, racing against Gavin Brady, the New Zealand helmsman who is now sailing for Italy's Prada Challenge for the America's Cup.

"Gavin got us in trouble at the start," Bromby said. "I remember coming off the start and saying to my crew 'Guys, this is the one where you have to dig me out of the hole'!"

After the lively pre-start skirmish, Brady was rolling over the Bermudian when Bromby managed to break clear and split away to the other side of the course.

"We both went head to wind after the start," Bromby recalled. "Gavin went off on port tack and we got a little split going to the left. We figured our only chance was to split. God was a Bermudian and we got the better of him on the first beat."

Brady said that he and his crew tried to keep their boat moving fast, even though it was 16 boat lengths astern of Bromby. As they started the second beat, with Bromby leading, they again split

"We did a nice job of keeping our speed up and got around the mark, and this time the right hand side paid," Brady said. "And that's a pretty good indication of how hard it was out there today."

Rounding the weather mark for the last time it was Bromby's turn to claim the lead which he then held to the finish to maintain his perfect record.

From the Group One qualifying, Bromby (6-0) and Brady (5-1) both advance along with young Brit Mark Campbell-James (4-2) and American Andy Horton (3-3).

Bermuda's other representative in the group, Dave Juleff, who qualified through the Bermuda match racing championships last month managed to avoid a whitewash yesterday when he defeated Thomas Kozyn of the US Virgin Islands to finish with a 1-5 record.

In Group Two, Bermuda veteran Nicky Lewin was unable to improve on Sunday's performance and finished with a 0-6 record.

Like Bromby, American Ken Read was perfect (6-0) and will be joined by Britain's Chris Law (4-2), Dane Lars Nordjberg (4-2) and American Scott Dickson (3-3)

Racing in the championship round starts tomorrow morning.

Today, after the wild-card qualifier, the seeded skippers will sail with corporate guest crews in the Renaissance Reinsurance Challenge Cup fleet racing event.

This is the third year that Colorcraft has sponsored the Gold Cup event.