During the past year our Junior crews have come along by leaps and bounds.   We have seen the number of Junior members increase to between thirtyfive and forty members, which has received the enthusiastic backing of parents and the Senior members of the Club.

We have been fortunate in that Club members have rallied around, training sessions have been reorgansied to accommodate this welcome addition to the Club membership, and there is a sense that as a Club we are making progress.

Although only having trained for about four months, the Junior crews have won their first shield and got as far as the semi finals in the Newquay championships.

Having firmly established themselves as enthusiastic members of the Club, the Juniors then really excelled themselves when they decided to try and improve their future prospects by obtaining a grant so that they could commission the building of a fibre glass gig for training purposes.

So they got together and planned their campaign  to obtain funding from the "Our Cash Your Dream" fund, where they had to make their presentation at Hayle Youth Club with less than a week to make their preparations.

On the appointed day they all turned up with "Energetic" in tow, in case the judges didn't know what a Cornish Pilot Gig looked like, and put forward their claim hoping for some financial help in achieving their target.   This was on the Monday with the result being announced on the following day.

So as you can imagine when Tuesday dawned, a rather anxious group of Juniors were waiting to hear the result of their endeavours.

Eventually the news broke, - they could hardly believe it - but their hard work in preparing their presentation had paid off, and they were informed that they had been granted the  £10,000 which they needed to place an order for their training boat, which could be moored in the harbour ready at a minutes notice for training purposes.

Previously thay had to wait before somebody could tow the traditional gigs down to the harbour for launching, then waiting until help was at hand to manhandle the gigs off their trailers as they were too heavy for a group of youngsters to manage on their own.