Sailing web pioneer on Global scene

by Al Constable on 25 Dec 2005 It is now coming up ten years since UK sailor and IT guru Gerald New launched one of the first serious sailing websites in the world. Back in 1995-1996 sailing on the web was almost a curiosity but now its the main delivery medium for sailing news world-wide.

British dinghy sailor, Gerald New had been competing in the UK in classic popular classes, Fireball, 505 and Flying Dutchman, until his technical publication work dictated a move to Europe and eventually the Far East.

In Malaysia while sailing big boats out of the Royal Selangor Yacht Club, Gerald became involved in technical publications on early internet websites. In 1996 he founded what was probably one of the first sailing websites of any significance, to keep in touch with the UK dinghy scene, by gathering and posting sailing results direct to the web.

In those early days of the Internet, when few tools were available for the layman to build Internet websites, Gerald also developed and hosted many UK sailing club and class association web sites.

On return to Europe his website, Sailweb.co.uk which by then had grown significantly, became part of the Mad for Sailing website which pioneered the full-time reporting of sailing events via the Internet, rather than as an adjacent promotional activity to a magazine.

Ahead of its time, Mad for Sailing’s business model proved difficult to maintain and after the difficulties for Mad for Sailing Gerald returned to his technical writing work. Mad for Sailing has re-emerged as James Boyd’s successful subscription sailing site The Daily Sail.

Sailweb was re-launched as a News Ticker service, initially running on the HISC website, but later taken up by over 200 sailing club and marine industry sites as a regular source of results and news. The growth of RSS news feeds technology led to an output in that format which is rapidly growing.

Meanwhile half way around the globe, Sail-World has established strong sites in the nether regions (Sail-World Australia, NZ, Asia and the USA and is launching Sail-World Cruising).

The merger of Sailweb and Sail-World.com opens a new chapter, bringing to the UK an independent, free source of sailing news and race reporting, covering everything from dinghies to the keelboat and offshore international events.

Sail-World’s Rob Kothe commented from Sydney today; ‘Sail-World’s world wide sailing news coverage is being strengthened considerably with Gerald’s UK and European news.

‘We in turn trust that UK and European sailors will enjoy the interesting flow of world sailing news coming from Sail-World Australia, NZ, Asia and the United States.

‘When Gerald cut the first html code ten years ago, who would have believed that the Internet would deliver such a sailing news revolution?

'In 2005, Sail-World has shared its news with 400,000 individual sailors from 186 countries, who have looked at close to 30 million pages. As sailors have voted with their mice, the Marine industry advertisers have followed in droves, so that the free Internet experience can continue.

‘The news ticker service pioneered by Sailweb is already being expanded around the world, with Clubs and other marine sites able to take a news mix of their choice ranging from Dinghy sailing, sport-boats, catamarans to big boats, taking news from any of the Sail-World regions.’

With lots of traveling and so much time in Europe Gerald’s sailing activity has been reduced to irregular participation in the Hayling Island Sailing Cub Flying Fifteen fleet.

The UK scene is certainly on the boil. The asymmetric dinghy revolution and the rise of the manufacturer based dinghy classes, the success of the UK team at Olympic level and the rise of sailors to super star status, is finally bringing sailing into the general public domain, particularly in the UK and France, and we know the Sail-World audience will certain enjoy the greater flow of UK and European news that Gerald will provide.