Bermuda's swimmers look to be on course for another successful year after re-writing the record books over the weekend.

In the first meet of the new season – the Mayflower Management Services swim – competitors young and old set new personal bests, and while off-Island Rebecca Sharpe and Eleanor Gardner continued to improve.

Competition for places at this year's Carifta Swimming Championships is hotting up with two more hopefuls meeting the qualifying standard for the meet which will be held in Jamaica in April.

At the Mayflower meet, Mitchell Gariepy broke two records in the under-10 age group, smashing Jason Cook's long-standing 100 metres breaststroke time by several seconds, and then broke Michael Frick's 800m free record, even though it was the first time he had raced over that distance.

Meanwhile, Benedict Parfit and Somer Froud both made themselves eligible for selection to what is sure to be a strong Bermuda team for the Carifta competition.

Last year Bermuda dominated the swimming, winning 11 medals, including six golds, while setting three Carifta records, two Bermuda Open records and 23 Bermuda age-group records in the process.

Sharpe, who won three of the Island's golds, is looking in ominous form once more after a successful Canadian Inter-university Swimming Championships in Toronto where she shaved three seconds off her own under-18 200m backstroke record.

In the preliminaries she took a second off her time while qualifying for the B Final, and then in the final she took a further two seconds off to finish 12th in a time of 2:16.87.

Gardner also enjoyed a good weekend. As a member of the Johns Hopkins University 4x100m freestyle relay team, Gardner and her team-mates won their regional championship and made the qualifying standard for NCAA Championships.