I’ve been given a new toy to play with, my very own blog. Ugly word, isn’t it. From time to time I’ll be adding new stories, observations on the sailing scene, opinions and yes, the occasional rant.

Yachting World, the magazine, takes up all, if not more, of my working days, often weekends and holidays too but at the same time it exposes me to many aspects of just what is happening in the world of sailing. And not all of that reaches the printed page which is why I welcome this opportunity to blog – if it can be used as a verb. You’ll also see other members of YW Editorial staff come online with their own micro sites and blogs over the next few weeks, in fact David Glenn has already enthusiastically embraced the technology with his Supersail World site (see home page) and Matt Sheahan is lending his expertise with regular podcasts of interviews with leading figures in the yachting world.

The Internet has had a huge impact on the magazine publishing business and has radically changed the way we think, plan and work and has undoubtedly changed the nature of Yachting World. In pre-web days we could ‘break’ sailing news stories several weeks after they happened. Today any story that is more than a few hours old is yesterday’s news so we publish more analyses, news features and stories behind the news. But at the same time we have developed the web site as part of the YW brand. But only now do I think that we have a truly integrated brand, where the website, instead of running parallel with the magazine, is an interactive part of it with Editorial staff contributing copy and material to both as part of their everyday work.

In addition to complete our adoption of the digital world we also have our online digital edition of Yachting World, page for page the same but with the added benefit of interactivity from editorial and advertisements and at a lower subscription price than the printed edition. This is available on the same publishing day as the UK edition of YW, meaning that many people who currently have to wait days, if not weeks for their monthly fix of the world’s best yachting writing and photography can download it on the same day.

Andrew Bray
EDITOR