Johnie Berntsson cut a serene figure as he made his way out for the final day of round-robin racing in the Bermuda Gold Cup knowing he was already in the semi-finals.

But he never takes it easy and just ten minutes into the day’s racing, he was the aggressor in an incident with Chris Poole in Hamilton Harbour, which left the US sailor’s boat too damaged to continue after it had been T-boned.

While Berntsson’s semi-final position was not hugely threatened despite being docked a point for his transgression, Poole was in a fight to progress to the knockout stages, with the point gained against the Swedish skipper proving crucial.

“It was a must-win match for us, as we tried to make it into the semi-finals,” Poole said.

“Pre-start we were a little slow coming in and we had a couple of boats on top of us as we tried to enter, so Johnie was able to get the cross.

“We did a couple of circles and he opted to go high and tack. We came in to leeward and his only out was to continue straight and reach over the top of us, but he would have been locked there, so he opted to swing in behind us. Unfortunately, there was no option of that and we had a spectacular collision.

“He damaged the shrouds, which were completely frayed. Our chainplate was damaged quite a bit, so the boatswain decided to take the boat out of rotation, pull the rigs and put a new shroud on it.”

Despite there being five sailors in contention for the final three semi-final spots, the skippers occupying the qualifying positions at the start of the day were still there at the end of the racing.

Eric Monnin, of Switzerland, and eight-times match-racing champion Ian Williams, of Britain, joined Berntsson and Williams in the semi-finals, with Nick Egnot-Johnson left on the bubble and one point short of progressing.

Although a perennial winner, Williams admitted to making a series of mistakes during the 14-race round-robin stage, but is promising better over the weekend.

“There was definitely a bit of work for us to do today,” Williams said.

“We came into the day treating it like a quarter-final and we needed to get two wins out of three races, which we did.

“We’re really happy to have progressed to the semi-finals and the game changes now as round-robin racing is different to knockout racing — you are up against the same type of competitor in the same level of boat.

“We’ve had four days of warm-up now and it’s time to bring the fire and not make silly mistakes. We should have cut them out by now and been focusing on the details, which become more important — such as winning the start.”

While the “big beasts” have made it into the final four, Egnot-Johnson was left still ruing a disastrous first day. After recording just two wins at the halfway point of the round-robin stage, Egnot-Johnson came out on top in the second half and fell agonisingly short of a place in the final four.

“It’s a tough end to just miss out on the semi-finals by a point, but we just punished ourselves in the first two days,” he said.

“It was a tough ask to come back after that, but we tried our absolute best and fought really hard. It just wasn’t enough to recover from the bad first day. It’s such a high level here and it shows you just how on form you have to be from the very first race.

“The positive is that we’ve shown when we reach our potential, we are capable of maybe winning an event like this. We’ll come up with a plan over the off-season to make sure that we are coming in hot next year and not starting slowly.”