Discover Sailing is the RYA Demand Creation Campaign which supports clubs by providing both physical and online resources, regional communicator support as well as allowing clubs to benefit from being part of the national promotions. 

Each year venues across the UK run events to encourage new participants to have a go. Whether they are new to the sport, returning to the sport or existing members, Discover Sailing is the perfect opportunity to be part of a national campaign and help people get out of the water. RYA provide resources to help you promote your event along with advice and guidance to make your event a success.

In the seven years the creation of the RYA Demand Creation campaign has been running :

• Over 153,000 people have attended events with over 113,000 people getting out on the water.
• Over 17,300 new memberships have been received as a result.
• Feedback from venues in 2019 suggests clubs successfully attracted over 3,300 new memberships. Importantly, almost 3,300 individuals signed up for follow on activities including additional taster sessions or start sailing courses at both clubs and centres.
• Over 6,300 people volunteered their time to share their passion for our sport.

Discover Sailing will run form the 1st May until the 30th September. It is important to understand that Discover Sailing is a tool to help affiliated organisations open their venues to visitors, it is not an instruction that we expect venues to run this event. Every venue has been impacted differently by the last year, with some venues able to open their doors to visitors and others not even getting open. It is really important that venues do what is best for them and their circumstances, in turn we will do all we can to support you.  

We have created a flexible system which allows for dates to change or indeed be cancelled or decided upon at short notice. To this end we will not be printing any dates on the resources this year, which has the added advantage of being reusable. We also have a new sign up and shop which is currently being tested which will allow venues to amend/update their own events.  

Many Discover Sailing events have historically been large events with a hundred people or more attending an event. Understandably venues will be hesitant to run events on such a scale however there could be an opportunity to run smaller more co-ordinated events. In order to support these the RYA has created an event sign up where event visitors can sign up to the event prior to attending, giving the venue the advantage of limiting numbers and being able to ask more information about relevant experience. This is available to all venues who would like this service and can be accessed from the Discover Sailing sign up page. The sign up will be embedded on the venues Discover Sailing Page and venues can also embed the link onto their own website. Equally if a club has their own sign up page, they can embed the link into their page on the Discover Sailing Events Map. An added benefit is that our research shows that running smaller events has the added advantage of a higher retention rate.  

Rediscover Sailing - Members.
We are acutely aware that many existing members/customers may have only benefited from being at their venue on one or two occasions over the last year.

• We very much share the hope that these members/customers will return with great enthusiasm later this year and as such we plan to support our affiliated organisations with a “ReDiscover Sailing” campaign which will run from 2nd April.  
• This campaign will be aimed at supporting venues to re-engage with their membership/customer base to encourage them back on the water when circumstances allow this spring.
• To support this, we have designed some ReDiscover Sailing resources (similar to the Discover Sailing resources) which we hope that venues will find useful in helping them attract their members/customers back.  
• We will be encouraging club members to get back in contact with their venues in order get back on the water through a regional and national comms campaign.  

ReDiscover Sailing – Non-Members
“What if we don’t have any volunteers happy to get into boats with visitors?” We have been humbled with the lengths that our volunteers have gone to over the last 10 months to try and get people sailing and very much appreciate that there may not be an appetite for volunteers to take people they don’t know yet sailing. We also know that last summer there has been a huge appetite for ex sailors wishing to get back on the water. As such there is a possibility of running “ReDiscover Sailing” events where venues are inviting previous members/customers or other ex sailors to your venue to get back on the water. It will of course be possible to purchase resources for ReDiscover sailing and we will be producing support videos to help you ensure that these events are run safely. Again, when we have a clearer idea next month of what is and isn’t possible, we will be in touch.

The RYA supports venues running Discover Sailing in two ways.

National Comms

• Promoting in national press. In previous years we have promoted Discover Sailing through national newspapers, Money Saving Expert, This morning (ITV)
• RYA Social media channels promote events both nationally and on regional channels

Regional Comms

• Our regional comms team promote events to local press and radio

Club Support

Take advantage of our press release template and our tips on getting your club on the radio. Our regional comms team are also available to support your event comms to your local community