Bermuda’s PJ Rodrigues and Christian Ebbin surpassed their expectations on their debut at the US Youth Championship in Bristol, Rhode Island.

The promising sailors secured an impressive fifth-place finish among the 26 entries in the 29er class at last week’s regatta, which was hosted by Roger Williams University.

With Rodrigues at the helm, the local team posted six top-five finishes, which included victory in the fifth leg of the 14-race series.

Bermuda’s representatives also finished highest among the three non-American teams ahead of Great Britain, who placed seventh, and 18th-placed Canada.

“This was an extremely successful regatta and to be in the top five with the calibre of sailors was fantastic,” Ebbin told The Royal Gazette.

“We had all top-ten finishes but one race, including a bullet. PJ and I were hoping for a top-ten finish so this exceeded our expectations.”

The sailor attributes the solid display at the championship to the hard work that he and Rodrigues have put into training with top sailors in the United States this year.

“We have been training regularly during the year with some of the top East Coast teams, so it was great to see how well we did with the West Coast teams as well,” he said.

“PJ and I were really in sync with each other and the techniques we had learnt in our lead up to this regatta from our US-based coaches at 2NINER really helped.

“We had spent two weeks prior training in Rhode Island and doing the Brooke Gonzalez invitational training programme with top US coaches and athletes, and this helped tremendously with our strategy.”

Rodrigues and Ebbin competed at the event in the hopes of securing a spot for Bermuda at December’s World Youth Championships in Brazil.

“We were competing with the top sailors in the US and all trying to get a spot to compete at the Youth Worlds in December, so we hope to be able to get a spot to represent Bermuda,” Ebbin said.

Tyler and Andrew Lamm, of the United States, won the US Youth Championships that were held June 26 to 30.

The 29er is a high performance double-handed, single-trapeze skiff capable of reaching speeds of 20 knots.

The one-design class is targeted at youth, in particular those with ambitions of sailing the larger Olympic 49er, in which siblings Jesse and Zander Kirkland represented Bermuda in at the 2012 Games in Weymouth, England.