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12:13 Wednesday 8 Aug 2018 Sue Pelling/LCWYoung guns go for it at Lendy Cowes Week

Team Josh from Shoreham lying third in the Under 25 Trophy before today's race – photo Tom Gruitt/LCW

Youth Day at Lendy Cowes Week is always popular but the fact that there are two significant trophies up for grabs (Land Rover Under 25 Trophy, and the Musto Young Skipper’s Trophy) for the overall winners at the end of the week, means competition is even more intense.

Going into today’s racing on Youth Day for the Land Rover Under 25 series Team Heiner III (IRC) was well ahead of the game nearly 20 points in front of Activa (RS Elite) with a team from Exeter University.

However, in third place not far behind on points, is Josh (Sonar) with Charlie Laurence-Fuller on the helm. This team of under 25 year olds from Shoreham is racing at Lendy Cowes Week for the first time as a team in one its club’s chartered Sailability Sonar keelboats.

Chatting to the team of six this morning before they went out, it was clear they are totally focused on learning as much as they can from their Lendy Cowes Week experience.

Laurence-Fuller (18) skipper said the team puts their success down to the help of their coach Kevin Headon who’s aim it is build an independent and capable team.

“His aim is to encourage us to be as independent and as out-going as we can be, and look for opportunities. That is why we all camp here, on our own and, when we have a problem with the boat, we have to sort it out ourselves, and source the equipment to fix it. We broke something yesterday, so we are just off to carry out a repair before we go sailing.

“We absolutely love being here at Lendy Cowes Week, it is awesome. Just now on the chain ferry for example we started chatting to one of the skippers of a Farr 40 who invited us sailing one day. Being here just creates so many opportunities. So our message to other young sailors is sign up for Cowes Week next year.”

Explaining how they got together to race as a team, Laurence-Fuller continued: “We are all able bodied but the club we sail from has a large Sailability section. We work with Sailability and take disabled sailors out sailing and, we also work to teach the next generation youth team too.”

Imogen Gregory (17) one of two female crew members, added: “We all come from the dinghy sailing world including Optimists, Toppers, Lasers. We are all part of a group of young cadet kids club, which gets young people involved in sailing and, we try to raise funds to be able to charter the boat from the club because that helps raise money for Sailability.”

As a tip for other young sailors considering entering Lendy Cowes Week Gregory concluded: “Because there are six of us but sail five-up, we rotate and each have a day off because it can be quite tiring. I believe that is a good thing to think about for other young sailors considering taking part next year.”