Welcome to the new look thedailysail

Introducing new changes we've made to the site

With almost two years gone since the launch of thedailysail we felt it was high time to begin a spruce up of the site and so...(fanfair of trumpets)...I'd like to take this opportunity to guide you around the latest changes.

The new header we hope looks less gothic and forboding than it did before. But beyond mere aesthetics we have re-arranged our navigation to improve the way the site reflects what's happening in our sport and, hopefully, make it more intuitive for readers to find content or simply to dive deeper into the site.

Via the 'home' tab above you now have access to our FAQ pages which should answer 90% of any problems you may encounter logging on to thedailysail as well a new site-map that gives a snapshot overview of the make-up of thedailysail.com.

The 'articles' tab enables access to our content by its type. Here you can review the news on the 'news' page, browse all our features, or simply interviews or our large number of photo galleries.

Also new is the 'specialist' area where you can chortle at other people's (or maybe your own) misfortune on the 'Disasters' page or read all the latest news about what's going on in women's sailing. Here you can also look back at the articles on technique we have published and gen up on Jim Saltonstall's Venue Guides if you're off to a race. An area well worth checking out is our new sponsorship page where you can review all our interviews with both sponsors and the sponsored. Nowhere will you find such a high quality list of articles on this subject.

Our 'review' section is now the home for our new equipment area. You can also find out about the latest boats and designs.

The 'offshore' area is much the same as before except that the Around Alone page has been changed to the event's new name of 5 Oceans. We have also added a 'Maxi' page focussing on the present spate of new monohulls in the 70ft+ size range and a 'two-handed' page reflecting the increasing interest in this type of racing - shorthanded offshore racing without being singlehanded.

The 'inshore' section - which we define as being for boats which don't normally stay out overnight - again is little changed. A majority of the content is to be found on our new 'keelboats' page which includes anything to do with monohull racing that is larger than a day boat (eg: Etchells, Ynglings, etc) and smaller than a maxi. We've also added a 'sportsboat' page and a new catch-all page for multihulls to fill gap we had previously between ORMA 60s and Tornados - an area of our sport we believe to be growing.

Our 'dinghy' area will be subject to further development in the near future, but prior to the start of the Games we rejuvenated our 'Olympics' page which we have pulled out and promoted to its own new section.

The calendar remains as it was - fully searchable and searchable by the above categories - and includes a database with useful contact details for sailing bodies, sailing and yacht clubs and class associations, internationally. If there's anything missing from these then please email me (or use the contact details to be found, of course, in the Home/ Contact Us page).

Last but not least is our search function. In madforsailing days and the early period of thedailysail this used to produce bizarre and unhelpful results. Now it is fully sorted to conjure up results in chronological order - give it a whirl.

We hope you approve of the changes. This is just phase one of numerous developments we have in progress for thedailysail.com. Any (constructive) comments would be welcome.

Enjoy

James Boyd
editor and publisher
thedailysail.com