The Daily Sail has its first birthday

Some sober words before the party kicks off...

Mon dieu - how time flies... It seems only yesterday that after a perilously short gestation period, including the acquisition of the madforsailing website, we fired up our server in its nuclear-proof bunker in London's Docklands, resulting in the first ever edition of TheDailySail being born.

In the creation of TheDailySail.com we put all the content from madforsailing dating back to before the Sydney Olympics into an entirely new design of website, illustrating our articles with bigger photos and improving the navigation by dividing the content up into sections where you could find all the stories relating to, for example, Open 60s, asymmetric dinghies, women's issues or disasters.

Inevitably our timing was fantastic. As we wrestled with technology and the ironing out of bugs in the UK, so 1 October 2002 was also the day the round robins of the Louis Vuitton Cup started on the diametrically opposite side of the world. Nice one.

Alinghi's eventual victory summarised what an exciting time it currently is in our sport. The America's Cup is coming home to Europe for the first time since 1851, with an event in 2007 that will combine European flair with Swiss precision.

Internationally we are going through what will be looked back on as a halycon era in maxi boats - both monohull and multihull - that are forever raising the bar in terms of performance under sail. Paul Larsen's innovative SailRocket project may do the same over the measured mile. In the world of handicap racing, a new Grand Prix rule is in the offing which may or may not solve the current international divide between IMS and IRC. In dinghy classes, where it is allowed, development is continuing apace with the latest foil technology, while other classes such as the F18 catamarans are well and truly on the ascent.

Nationally, if results from Cadiz are anything to go by, team GBR looks set to be the strongest team at the Athens Olympics. In offshore sailing three of the world's top Open 60s are in British hands as are two of the world's fastest G-class multihulls (admittedly without sponsors at present), while Ellen MacArthur has a new trimaran under construction, purpose-built for breaking solo records.

With all this going on, we at TheDailySail remain as enthusiastic as ever. Aside from our continuously developing news and feature content, we have a number of exciting new features that we will be rolling out over the next months.

I would like to thank my business partner Andy Nicholson and our past and present IT managers Daniel Asante and Simon Hall for their work on 'the beast', all the sportsmen, adventurers and pioneers we write about and of course you the readers for your commitment to what we hope is the most cutting edge among sailing media.

James Boyd
editor and publisher
thedailysail.com

PS: Tonight we will be celebrating our 365 days of being on air, at Hamble's finest hostelry - the King & Queen. Any readers are welcome to join us. X