Ireland's sailors Robert Dickson and Sean Waddilove agonisingly missed out on a medal as they finished fourth in the men's skiff.
The Irish duo started the medal race, which counted double and was added to their 10-race points tally, in second place but were one of three boats to cross the start line early, forcing them to turn back and cross the line again.
That left them well adrift and they were unable to make up any ground on the field, coming in last of the nine finishers (Croatia were disqualified for not restarting) in 21:40.00.
That added 18 points to their score for a total of 91, meaning they missed out on bronze to the USA, who finished fourth in the medal race.
Spain's Diego Botin le Chever and Florian Paul Trittel cruised to first place and gold with 70 points and New Zealand won silver after ending third on 82 points.
Poland also had to turn back at the start line but managed to finish the medal race in fifth, ending up in that spot overall, two points behind Ireland. Seventh would have been enough for Ireland to take bronze.
"It's tough, but it can’t take away from the fact we sailed an absolutely fantastic week," Waddilove told RTÉ Sport afterwards. "It's been our best regatta to date, so we can be proud of that.
"It came down to a 20-minute race, but the whole week we sailed fantastically. We should be really proud of ourselves, there's not many things we could have done differently this week, and it came down to a 20-minute race."
Dickson said: "I'm pretty disappointed, we just had a bad race, but you know, we're pretty proud of how we sailed throughout the whole week. Fourth, it's still a really good result. It's just a shame that it a panned out the way did.
"We were both there mentally, and it's just a very small mistake, very small margin, and like you know, we didn't really do anything massively wrong. It was just it was no way to get back into that race."
The 27-year-old said that the course conditions meant that their medal hopes were all but over from the beginning.
In sailing, boats must decide for themselves whether they need to turn back after a general signal for a false start.
"We had a tough time on the start line, the boat below us was over the line so we had to make a decision, do we go back and clear ourselves if we were over as well, and we took that decision.
"After that, there wasn't really much chance to get back into it. It was a fairly straightforward course so not much we can do."
In the women's dinghy event, Eve McMahon was 21st (discard score) in race two of ten and 16th in race three. She is 15th overall on 24 points.
In the men's dinghy, Finn Lynch was 26th (discard) in race three and 22nd in race four and lies 25th on 56 points.
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