Newly crowned Vrengen Gold Cup champion Jonathan Telsey was almost at a lost for words yesterday moments after capturing overall Bermuda International Invitational Race Week honors in the International One Design (IOD) fleet.

"It's almost surreal. I didn't expect it," the urological surgeon exclaimed, after the final results were officially posted on the notice board at the Royal Bermuda Yacht Club (RBYC).

"We really came here to do the best we could, and I guess it was good enough to win."

The 41 -year old skipper, who celebrated his birthday earlier this week on local surf, clinched overall class honors by placing second in yesterday's final race behind eventual 'B' Series winner Jan Petter Roed.

A day earlier the two skippers collided on the race course and were forced to retire, leaving the race for the overall honors "up in the air" heading into yesterday's finale.

"We were a little banged up coming in today and we didn't know how things would play out," said Telsey, who also won this year's IOD 'A' Series title.

"I was a little rattled because I had never been hit broadside by a boat traveling at full speed before.

"But collisions do happen and fortunately nobody was hurt.

"Going into today's race I knew that the closest competitor was Reod and with the throw outs I had a four -point lead.

"My goal was not to let any boats get in between us and sail cleanly and not get into any trouble, and I was able to accomplish that."

After receiving a few ceremonial high fives from friend and foe alike, Telsey hailed his crew (Scott Redmon, Phyllis Aschenbrenner and Sandy and Kin Yellott) who he described as "the best a skipper can ask for".

"I am so happy and proud of my crew; they worked extremely hard to get us around the course fast," he said.

"This was a tough week. We saw everything from strong gusts and rough seas to light and fluky and the round robin of boats made things tricky too. It was very challenging."

Also sipping champagne yesterday was Bermuda's Trevor Boyce who, rather expectedly, ran away with J-24 honors.

"We had really good boat speed all week and if you have good boat speed in a small fleet you can make mistakes and recover from them," said Boyce, who finally put an end to a –19-year Gripper Trophy drought.

"We had some bad starts and a few problems from time to time but with good boat speed we were able to make up."

Boyce proved to a model of consistency all week, finishing no lower than second to emphatically punctuate his dominance over the rest of the fleet.

"It really feels good, we had a really good week," he added.

Another son of the soil, Peter Backeberg, finished second while third place honors went to Englishman Bruce Stone.

For the first time in several years a new winner was crowned in the Etchells fleet - despite a spirited fight-back by defending champion Peter Bromby who eventually had to settle for runner's up behind American Chris Busch.

Busch's fellow countrymen CV Voorhis placed third respectively.