The National Byte Championships will hopefully go ahead this weekend in the Great Sound after numerous postponements because of the weather.

And the championships will give Youth Olympic sailors a chance to compete before they head down to the Cayman Islands next month to race in the North American Byte Championships which also serves as qualifier for the Youth Olympics for sailors in North America and the Caribbean.

Somers Cooper, head of Bermuda Sailing Association, said yesterday of the National Championships: "They are actually the 2009 National Championships which were supposed to be held just before Christmas. But we have had to postpone them time and time again because of the bad weather Bermuda has experienced."

The championships will be held in the Great Sound but if the wind is too strong they will be held in another location – possible Granaway Deep.

Next month six young Bermuda Byte sailors will try and qualify the Island for a spot in this summer's Youth Olympic Games in Singapore.

At the North American Byte Championships, hosted by the Cayman Islands Sailing Club from March 10-15, Bermuda will be up against 34 sailors from 14 nations.

And only four countries can qualify for Singapore.

If one of Bermuda's sailors does grab one of the qualifying spots, then there will be trials staged in Bermuda to see who will go to Singapore in August.

All the six sailors have come out of the Optimist class and have graduated to the Byte class which now has 10 active sailors in the local fleet.

Since September the Byte class have staged five week-long clinics, bringing in Argentine coaches Pablo and Dino Weber who have over 20 years of international coaching experience between them.

And since October the sailors have been training for the competition in the Cayman Islands.

The local sailors are Mackenzie Cooper, 15, who won all of the team trials last year with the Bermuda Optimist Dinghy Association and also attended all three international Optimist events – the North American Championships, the South American Championships and the World Championships. He was also a member of the team that placed third in team racing in the South American Championships last year. And the former Warwick Academy student competed in the Canadian Byte Championships last summer and is currently attending acclaimed sailing school Tabor Academy.

Alexander Davis, 14, sailed at the Canadian and World Byte Championships last summer. He attends Saltus.

Kalin Hillier, also from Saltus, competed in last year's North and South American International Optimist events. The 15-year-old was a member of the Worlds team in 2008.

Rahiem Steede, 15, from Berkeley Institute is a WaterWise graduate and attended last year's North American and South American Optimist Championships.

Similarly Dimitri Stevens is 15, attends Berkeley and is also a WaterWise graduate. He was a recipient of the Government Youth Sports Award last year and was a member of all three 2009 Optimist teams and a member of Bermuda's third place team at the South American Championships. He also competed at the Canadian and World Byte Championships this past summer.

Owen Siese, 14, from Warwick Academy, was Bermuda top performing sailor in overseas competition last year and placed fifth at the North American Optimist Championships in the Dominican Republic and was a member of all three Bermuda Optimist teams including the winning team in the South American Championships. He competed in the Canadian and World Byte Championships.

Bermuda's youngsters will be up against sailors from Barbados, British Virgin Islands, Cayman, Canada, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Jamaica, Netherlands Antilles, St. Lucia and the US Virgin Islands.

The five clinics staged by the Argentine brothers were also attended by sailors from the US, Canada, Dominican Republic, US Virgin Islands and the Netherlands Antilles. All in all there have been 11 different sailors, five of them female, who have flown to Bermuda for the clinics. Some also returned for more than one clinic.

The same overseas sailors, who were chosen by Pablo and Dino Weber, will all be in the Cayman Islands next month and include Ian Barrows from the USVI who placed second at the Optimist World Championships and Just Van Aanholt who won the Laser 4.7 regatta at the Orange Bowl in Miami in December.

Martin Siese, the Star crew-mate for Olympic sailor Peter Bromby, has been helping with the Byte programme in Bermuda and said recently that the Byte class was a natural progression from the Optimist class.

"The idea is to get as many people racing as we can – the more we can expose these young guys to racing, the better it will be. The Bytes are geared to lighter persons – perhaps between 120-160 pounds although at 160 pounds you are getting a bit big for the Byte. But it is a great boat to use as a stepping stone between the Opti and the Laser."