Keith Swinton advances into GKKS Spring Cup semis in Sweden

The Royal Gothenburg Yacht Club (GKKS), Sweden's largest yacht club, is located in Gothenburg and since a number of years the GKSS Spring Cup has been the qualifying race to enter Match Cup Sweden which is one of the legs in the World Match Racing Tour.

The regatta takes place this weekend and today, Saturday, most of Stage 1 and Stage 2 were completed. As a result, 3 of the 4 semifinalists are already known. They are Keith Swinton, the young up-and-coming match racer from Australia, Mattias Rahm from Sweden and Staffan Lindberg from Finland. The fourth semifinalist will either be Richard Fornader or Phil Robertson.

Here's the report Keith Swinton sent us from Sweden:

Today we completed the round robin stage of the event finishing with a score line of 4 wins and 2 losses.

Gothenburg put on a fantastic day with 12-18 knot winds and some nice spells of sunshine. Our best two races today were against Mattias Rahm, Stena Bulk Sailing Team a past winner of Match Cup Sweden and Phil Robertson, Waka Racing from New Zealand. In the race against Rahm we managed to start to windward of the Swedish team and sail them all the way to the port lay-line. From here we kept a close cover and managed to hold on to take the win.

In our race against Robertson we started to leeward forcing the kiwis to the right, we picked up more wind on the left side of the track. From here we controlled the race and extended for the win.

Tomorrow morning we will find out our opponent for the semi-final stage.

"We did a nice job in our starts and around the race track today. Our boat handling is getting better and the communication is also growing between the team. Unfortunately we made some unforced errors in our losses today but that was a good learning experience for later in the event", Per Frykholm, Sweden, Mainsheet/ Tactics.