campaign for five top local Optimist Dinghy sailors.

Making the trip to the US and Canada will be 15-year-old Alexa (AJ) Crane and 14-year-olds JP Doughty, Zan Kirkland, Alex Lines and Giles Spurling.

All except Doughty have been competing year-round, racking up over 100 short course races in the last nine months.

Crane won the 1996 Bermuda Nationals and the Bank of Butterfield Grand Prix.

She recently returned from the US Nationals where she placed 40th out of 83.

Kirkland won the 1996 Fall, 1997 Winter and Spring Series while Lines and Spurling have also triumphed in local races and series.

The trip, from July 26 to August 15, is part of a long-term plan to take Bermuda to the next level through intense, big fleet competition and expose the youngsters to world class coaching.

The team will compete in the New England Championships in Marblehead, Massachusetts, with 250 other young sailors, and then the Southern Massachusetts Championships and the Ottawa Championships before finishing with the Canada Olympic Regatta in Ontario.

They will be coached by Brett Davis, an All-American sailor from Harvard and a member of the US sailing team in the Laser class.

Davis is recognised as a national level coach in the Optimist class on the basis of his coaching of the New Jersey Shore sailing team who were rated among the best in the world.

Interest in Optimist sailing has steadily grown and it has been reported that over 3,000 boats are being added to the world fleet each month. Several Olympic sailors have graduated from the class.

Youngsters can sail the seven foot dinghies through the year of their 15th birthday.

Bermuda, which has several other talented young dinghy sailors, including Alex Jones (15), William Thompson (14), O'Neill Lindsay (15) and Lawson Williams (12), hope to host the Optimist North American Championships next year.