Rockal Evans’s 2020 Olympic Games qualifying bid received a confidence boost in Queensland, Australia, at the weekend.

The Bermuda sailor produced a steady display in variable conditions to win the International Finn Old State Championship — his first title in the single-handed Olympic class dinghy.

“It feels good to get my first win here,” Evans said. “It feels like all of the hard work is slowly paying off.”

The 31-year-old finished the seven-race series, contested mostly in 15-20 knot breezes on Waterloo Bay, five points ahead of second-place James Dagge with Marcus Whitley rounding off the podium a further seven points back.

“There was probably four guys who could have won realistically,” he added. “It was pretty windy for the most part of it but we had maybe two races that were pretty light under ten knots with flat water.”

Evans hopes to represent Bermuda at the 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo in the same class that his late grandfather Howard Lee competed in for Bermuda at the Montreal Olympics in 1976.

He is vying for one of only three available Olympic spots from the North and South American region and moved to Sydney last October to enhance his qualifying chances.

“My Olympic qualifier is in January next year in Biscayne Bay, Florida, and the sailing conditions are pretty much identical to the racecourse that I sailed at the weekend.”

Campbell Patton made a poor start on the opening day at the Youth Sailing World Championships in Gdynia, Poland, yesterday.

He was among a bunch of sailors who were black flagged for going over the start line in the only race contested in the Laser Radial because of the light breeze.

Elsewhere, Christian Ebbin secured an impressive top-ten finish among a record fleet of 254 sailors at the Optimist World Championship, which concluded in Antigua yesterday.

Sebastian Kempe finished three places back in eleventh, followed by Magnus Ringsted (85th), Laura Hupman (106th) and Nicole Stovell (197th).