THEY are the small band of devoted sailors hell bent on opening up the sport of sailing to the masses.

Ian Gilmour, Phil Devereux and Ash Holmes are the men behind Pelican Racing, a charter company and sailing school specialising in “hassle free” sailing.

The concept is a simple but effective one – help as many people as possible get out on the water and enjoy sailing for a minimal cost.

The company is the brainchild of London consultant Ian, who, fancying a change of lifestyle, moved from the Big Smoke to the Isle of Wight.

Just months after catching the sailing bug, Pelican Racing was born.

Ian, who had never sailed until his move, said: “I thought to myself ‘this sailing lark looks quite fun’ so I bought a kayak to get out on the water with but it wasn’t enough – I had got the bug.

“I bought a Laser SB3 keelboat at the Southampton Boat Show and approached the United Kingdom Sailing Academy in Cowes.

“They put me in touch with Ash and set about putting a campaign together.

“Along with Phil we raced all year, ending the season at the first Laser SB3 world championships in Dublin in 2008.”

Ash added: “I got wind of six Laser SB3s going quite cheap so we snapped them up and it just went from there.

“We based the whole model for Pelican Racing on Ian’s experience – a person who had never sailed before, wanted to get into sailing and racing but perhaps couldn’t afford a boat themselves.

“The idea was to make sailing as accessible as possible to as many different people as possible.”

Pelican Racing officially launched in April last year – and has gone from strength to strength setting up new offices at Cowes Yacht Haven as well as expanding their fleet of boats to ten.

They have run popular ‘Try Sailing for £10’ schemes at Cowes Week, teamed up with the RYA to offer subsidised places in a weekly racing series and launched their own sailing school.

“To own a boat is quite expensive and just not an option for many people,” said Ian, “So we offer a solution to that. We own the boats, you turn up and sail them. It’s as simple as that.

“Our clients now range from experienced racers to complete novices from all sorts of different backgrounds.”

As well as doing their bit to promote sailing in the Solent and attract visitors to the area, the boys from Pelican are even trying to cheer up city workers made gloomy by the credit crunch.

They have launched the City Challenge, starting in April, which will see teams from London race against their own business sector in four divisions: Insurance and Asset Management, Legal, Banking and IT.

They have also pioneered new technology that allows a live video feed to be beamed back from each boat to the shore so friends, family or colleagues can watch all the action from the water courtesy of a tiller mounted camera.

The technology, called Geocasting, is available on all of Pelican’s boats making sailing a truly spectator-friendly sport.