The sailing membership market is, with few exceptions, a regional market. The Mediterranean sailing club for the Mediterranean sailor. The Caribbean charter membership for the Caribbean enthusiast. The Pacific sailing association for the Pacific Rim member. These are the regional sailing memberships that serve their regional markets with programmes designed for the specific conditions and the specific destinations of the region they operate in. They are good products for the regional market they serve. They are not the Naora programme.
The Naora programme is the sailing membership that begins where the regional programmes end, at the point where the regional programme’s itinerary reaches its geographic boundary and the member who wants to continue has nowhere to continue to within the same programme. The Mediterranean programme ends at the Strait of Gibraltar.
The Caribbean programme ends at the Panama Canal. The Naora programme begins at Gibraltar and continues through the Caribbean and through Panama and across the Pacific and through Indonesia and across the Indian Ocean and through the Red Sea and back to the Mediterranean. It is the programme for the member who has completed the regional programme and who is ready for the world.
What Being Built Around the World Means
Being built around the world means the route covers the world rather than a region of it. It means the boarding points are in the world rather than in a single region of it. It means the payment architecture serves the currencies of the world rather than the currency of the home market.
It means the digital sessions are scheduled for the world’s time zones rather than the time zone of the co-founders. It means the community is selected from the world’s professionals who are ready for the offshore sailing life rather than from the professionals of a single region who can conveniently reach the home port. It means the language of the website is English, the language that the global professional class shares — rather than the language of the country where the company is registered.
The Naora programme was built around the world because the offshore sailing circumnavigation is the world. The route goes around it. The programme follows the route. The members follow the programme. What they find, wherever they board and wherever they disembark, is the offshore sailing life in the form the circumnavigation produces, the same form for the member from Singapore and the member from São Paulo and the member from Nairobi and the member from Amsterdam.
The offshore sailing life does not have a regional version. It has the version the ocean produces. The ocean is the world’s ocean. The programme is the world’s programme.
