Project Timeline from 2021 to 2026
The project began in 2021, when Michelle Gent—unable to sail during lockdown—started gathering stories and practical knowledge from sailors she knew regularly used their dinghies for adventure. From this collaboration, the first set of dinghy trails was created, quickly proving their value to RYA members.
By 2024, some trail details were becoming outdated and at the Dinghy Show that year, Steve White proposed a community‑led project to refresh the trails and redesign their format so they could be easily updated. This website was launched in May 2024 as a shared project space, and the rest of that year was spent working with the RYA Digital Team to develop the technical foundations.
A call for volunteers was made at the 2025 Dinghy Show, and throughout that year the community converted the original PDFs into editable trails.
Today, the initiative continues to be shaped, updated, and maintained by volunteers, with the RYA providing funding, digital support, and national‑level promotion to help the project grow.
Get involved
If you’d like to join the Dinghy Trails volunteer team or submit a new trail of your own, we’d love to have you involved.
You can find everything you need to get started here