Monique (15) & her brother Ollie Vennis-Ozanne (13) from Fareham, Hampshire, are worthy winners of the first YJA Young Blogger of the Year Competition.   Their video on last year’s Ovington Junior Inland Sailing Championship at Rutland Water was headlined at the Prizegiving held at the RYA Dinghy Show, Alexandra Palace, London on Saturday 3rd March.  The judges determined that this young brother and sister team, who are looking to make a first break into sailing journalism. showed remarkable professionalism, mixing drone footage with crew interviews and running commentary

Monique and Ollie Vennis-Ozanne won the latest GoPro video camera presented  by 1080 Media TV, whose Managing Director Cliff Webb said: “The standard of entries for this first YJA Young Blogger Competition was encouragingly high and we as a company would be very happy to give these two an opportunity to gain work experience within the industry.”

A quartet of talented youngsters were shortlisted from a wide entry encompassing all media skills from video, photography, standard blogs to an e.book and paintings.

Runners up:

Ollie Perkins (16) from Guildford, Surrey, for his widely praised book on weather forcasting titled  The Message of the Clouds

Andrew Shrimpton (16) from Gosport for his interesting video presentation on the 2016 Round The Island Race.

 ‘Highly Commended’ entries

Frances Fox (16) from Bath who wrote an instructive blog titled Top 10 Topper Tips 

Cathal McCahey (21) from Dublin who made an instructional video news presentation profiling Ireland’s 2020 49er Olympic hopefuls;

James Tomlinson (17) from Cowes, Isle of Wight for his illustrated blog on a day of racing in the Solent

Charlie Cadin (15) from Jersey for his video presentation on the 2017 Round the Island

Julius Hornung (19) from Portsmouth for his photographic blog covering a day’s yacht racing in the Solent

Daniel Keenan (15) from Sutton Coldfield, Warwickshire for his blog on competing in the RYA Zoning Junior dinghy championships at Rutland Water

Rosa May-Brown (15) from Teignmouth, Devon for her illustrated guide on what to pack for a sea voyage

Yana Skvortsova (16) from Guildford, Surrey for her stylised paintings of Topper dinghies racing.