She was awarded third place in the Skud 18 division for the 2010/2011 World Cup season.

She secured the trophy with good performances in the Sail Melbourne event last December, as well as the Skandia Sail for Gold event in Weymouth, England back in June.

Ame, who lives in Narooma and who graduated from Narooma High School, is possibly the world's most severely disabled sailor competing at World Championship level.

On July 4, 1988, Ame was born with Phocomelia. She has no arms, only half of her left leg, a small foot, and three toes, which she uses for eating, writing, playing the trumpet, and fulfilling her passion for sailing.

She sails her Skud 18 boat with the help of her vision-impaired sailing partner Lindsay Mason, who does the sail work while she steers.

They are deep into in preparations for the International Association for Disabled Sailing (IFDS) World Championships to be held in Port Charlotte, Florida in early January.

She has been training up at Pittwater in Sydney Harbour every weekend for the last month and is confident they are in good form for the competition.

“We’ve been sailing consistently through the season and even though we didn’t get the trophy till two week ago, it proves we are improving,” she said.

Ame, together with her brother Robert and sister Kate, flies to America on Friday will get to Florida a week early so she can train on the local waters.

Unfortunately, due to a lack of financial resources, she is not able to stay on for the ISAF World Cup that takes place in nearby Miami later in the month.

Her arch rival Daniel Fitzgibbon, with whom she is vying for selection to the 2012 Paralympics in London, is going to be able to make it to Miami.

But Ame is still with a chance for selection and said her third place trophy from the IASF would be taken into consideration by the selectors.

“Even if we don’t get selected for London 2012, Lindsay and I have already decided to keep on going for Rio 2016,” she said.

You can follow Ame through the “Ausgold Sailing Team” Facebook page and any donations made through this page would be much appreciated.