Who is the average Yachting Monthly reader and what sort of boat does he or she sail? The other day, the YM crew were pondering this mystery. I remember former editor Geoff Pack profiling the typical YM reader as 'a Daily Telegraph-reading, Volvo-driving professional with 2.4 children and a 25 to 35ft monohull...' But that was more than 10 years ago and average boat sizes have got bigger while most broadsheet newspapers have downsized to tabloid.
Our readership is wonderfully diverse - from bishops to bin men and judges to jailbirds. We once had a subscriber detained at Her Majesty's pleasure in Brixton Prison who wrote asking for the plans of Maurice Griffith's Eventide!
We know there are racing yachtsmen who read YM just as avidly as our cruising majority. Many of you sail multihulls and wooden classics. There are also day sailors, live-aboard yachtsmen, creek crawlers, blue-water adventurers, charterers and people who crew for friends. In our painstaking search to define the YM reader profile, we came up with three categories based on where you keep your boat: marina, mooring or mud? Most of us here in the office evolved from primeval mud to moorings. Three of us have now 'down-sized' from marinas to moorings - and that was before the credit crunch hit this year! Even the most sophisticated sailor will have mud under his fingernails, if he's used to anchor work. Welcome to the wonderfully miscellaneous marine world.
Choosing the perfect cover illustration to suit all is a monthly challenge. Our selection process is exhaustive and the debates quite lively. One of our best-selling covers featured three sailors in the cockpit of a Mediterranean charter yacht. The fact that the sailors were young bikini-clad women was an incidental extra. It was an unstaged, spontaneous moment that captured the joy of sail. 'Sex sells' is the mantra of marketing men, but here at YM we believe you'd prefer the curving sheer line of a beautiful yacht to an airbrushed model.
Tucked away in this month's issue, you'll find a questionnaire aimed at helping us to make your magazine even more relevant, entertaining and informative. This is your chance to tell us what you'd like to see in YM and help us unravel the mysteries of its readership - you!
