qualifier William White as his opponent for Sunday's semifinals, leaving Blythe Walker and Timmy Patton to battle in the other match-up in Hamilton Harbour.

Bromby exercised his right to choose his opponent yesterday at the Royal Bermuda Yacht Club after finishing top amongst the eight skippers in the round robin last Sunday, though he admitted at this stage there will be no easy matches.

"Going into sudden death it will be the first to win two but in Hamilton Harbour anything can happen on any given day,'' said Bromby.

"We're hoping to first get by our semifinal and then make it to the Gold Cup.

If we can win the Bank of Bermuda Cup that would be fine, too. It's a best-of-three and anything can happen.'' Bromby said it was a decision between he and his three-man crew, Lee White, Penny Simmons and Dennis Correia, to choose White who was the only skipper to beat them in seven round-robin races on Sunday.

White did not appear too surprised at Bromby's choice and knows he will have a tough job against Bermuda's top IOD skipper.

"If we take a win off him we would be most pleased that we could make it go to three,'' said White who is planning about three more practice sessions before Sunday's important best-of-three semifinals. He will be joined by brother Brian, Bill Pollett and Graham Pitkethly.

Bromby's only blemish last weekend was the loss to White after miscounting the number of legs and rounding the final leeward mark instead of sailing through to the finish.

"In the race we had against William, although we went around the wrong mark he was very close to us at the time, as close as anybody was all day, and I think he's done very well to get this far,'' Bromby said. "We started with eight of the better sailors in the country and now we have four of the best from last Sunday.'' Patton, who has confirmed that he will not be taking part in the Omega Gold Cup if he reaches the final -- because he and a crew member work for the event -- was not too concerned about meeting Blythe Walker in the other semifinal.

"We're going out to enjoy ourselves, I don't think we will win, but if they beat us at least they know we were there,'' said Patton.

Patton was also full of praise for the promising White.

"I think William White has shown a great deal of alacrity in the pre-start manoeuvres and he will be a force to reckon with in the future, I suspect.'' This is the second year of sponsorship for the Bank of Bermuda and Christian Traber, manager of corporate communications, said the bank is pleased to be a part of the event, which is fast-growing in popularity.

"Most important, the Bank of Bermuda Cup serves to acknowledge and celebrate Bermuda's shared heritage, which is sailing and this is the first and only sailing event that allows Bermudian crews to compete for entry into the prestigious Omega Cup event,'' said Traber.

"We at the bank are very pleased with the organisation provided by the RBYC and Sail Sport International, which is the organisation that is doing some of the promotion on behalf of Omega.

"Accordingly, it very much fits in with our marketing plans from both a domestic and international perspective and both our event and the Omega Cup give us an international and domestic profile exposure.'' Racing starts at 11 a.m. on Sunday.