After 10 years of operating on a voluntary basis, BNYA now needs to build its capacity. Mindful that there are several important collections awaiting to be deposited we need space and resources for our volunteers to work - to catalogue, digitise and index the material. This move has been postponed long enough and we need the support of the sailing community to preserve our sailing history. If you have enjoyed your sailing career then please help us establish this facility.

The original driver for establishing BNYA was the recognition that material is being lost - it can be disposed of by family, landlords, etc once there is no-one to take responsibility for it - and much is still at risk. We also recognise that there are limited places to deposit material - we have worked closely with the National Maritime Museum for whom sailing is a minority interest. Having said that - our aim is for access to be totally digital to facilitate access to the content in our proposed reading room. Note: too much of the material is still in copyright, but in order to preserve it for the future we need to conserve it now, especially on-line material which has a short life; and, due to the extensive cross-indexing some training is involved in navigating the system..

Whilst BNYA has been operating now for several years, its work has focussed on developing the underlying database and tools to manage what is potentially a huge data set and to populate it with information that can be readily researched in order to test everything. The database now includes some 45,000 boats, 5,000 organisations, 30,000 references, 250,000 images, archived web material as well as extensive classification data and cross-indexing and this provides the structure for moving forward - several terabytes of data. While nominally a "British" archive, Britain has operated world-wide - designed and built boats, organised and participated in events, set the rules, etc. - so the archive reflects that scope and is quite encyclopaedic in its nature. We already have some equipment, such as a selection of scanners, and need to set it up so that more volunteers can participate.

See here: https://www.bnya.org.uk

Of course, should you have a box of memorabilia to add to our records, please contact us. We don't need for it to be deposited - just to know what and where it is - and if it can be digitised we can make it accessible to researchers.