What is sailability?

What is Sailability?

To offer sailing oppurtinities for people with disabilities, organisations can organise this and fund it independantly or they can use the RYA official sailability scheme. There are advantages and disadvantages to using the RYA scheme and to doing it independantly. The RYA define sailability as "a program available at some sailing clubs that offers an additional level of support, an established network of volunteers, and equipment to assist people of all-abilities to get into sailing".

According to the RYA website, over 53,000 young people and adults with disabilities are introduced to sailing per year.

Using the RYA sailability scheme has the benefit of support and assistance from experts from the RYA. Furthermore large grant to aid in the funding can be obtained, which is very important as the equipment needed to provide disabled sailing oppurtunities is very expensive. However the guidelines that the RYA set can be restricting and this can lead to organisations indepenently organising and funding the sailing.

As I mentioned before funding is very important as offering disabled sailing is very expensive. The actual boats that the people will need have to be specially designed for use with disabled people. This means they are more stable to prevent any chance of the people falling into the water. Furthemore the steering mechanism needs to be changed to allow for people with possibly not very much movement. Furthermore to help these people into the boats a special lifting crane is needed which can also be pricey.

However funding can be easily obtained either through the RYA or independently.