Blue Book of Boats

Data released by Saild.com the mobile app and online sailing log book, suggests that sailors are less likely to stay in contact via Facebook than more traditional channels such as email or SMS to keep in touch and organise cruising and race trips.

Saild survey data shows that up to 52.5% of Saild users never use Facebook to keep in touch with friends who sail and 40.7% use it sometimes. The preferred method by far was email with 62.7% of users stating they used it often.

The contrast is quite extreme it would seem that as sailors we are around three times more likely to use email and twice as likely to use phone or SMS to keep in touch with their sailing friends and crew.

Sailing is a very under represented population on Facebook itself. Data shows that as a sailor you’re three times less likely to have registered an interest vs skiing or snowboarding on the social network when comparing against annual participation in each sport*.

“To a degree the sailing industry is still catching up with social media” says Saild.com founder Duncan Malcolm, “But I think that’s also balanced by the passion for sailing amongst sailors and sailing companies which means that the people who are really active prefer to spend more time actually on the water doing it rather than sitting at home talking about it.”

About Saild
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Saild is a web and iPhone app which allows sailors to keep a log of where they’ve been sailing. Tracks and photos are stored online at saild.com along with mileage and other stats and can be shared with crew and friends.

*Approximately 92,200 Facebook users have shown an interest in Sailing. This is according to Facebooks own data in the UK vs approximately 733,100 who participated in small or big boat sailing in the UK according to the Marine Leisure Associations 2011 Annual survey. Skiing & Snowboarding are shown as having 462,520 interested users vs approximately 910,000 people taking part in the two sports from the UK last year.