Why we’re creating Spinnaker.
The passion which led to big media project.
Here’s a story about Spinnaker — The Sailing Magazine. How it happened and why we are doing it.
The Idea
First of all it’s a passion. A passion to sailing. It just boils the blood and we can’t sit still.
Two years ago we thought that we should create some digital media which would cover the world of sailing. That should be some tool that helps to unleash our passion and spread the sailing spirit to the public.
That’s how we made a decision to start a simple instagram account and gather top images and videos in one place. It happened back in January 12, 2016.
Today (5 August, 2018) Spinnaker Instagram celebrates 80,000 (!!!) followers from all over the world. Guys, we owe you 80k thank you’s and we’re really happy that you’re with us!!!
More of that — we haven’t spent a single penny on account promotion. So we’re extremely proud to reach these numbers organically and happy to provide you with such a great content.
Founders
So, who we are)
We’re two friends from Odessa, Ukraine. Doesn’t need to say that we’ve met while looking where and how to sail.
Stephan Kozel is a skipper with 8 years of sailing experience. He runs our instagram and sails around the world.
I’m, Vitaly Balakhonov, a sailing enthusiast with 3 years of sailing. As a digital marketer and UX designer, I took care of graphics, website creation and designing everything for the project.
Evolution
Spinnaker Instagram got booming growth and within few months we had thousands of subscribers. So at the beginning of the Summer, 2016 we decided that we need a next step. That became our blog, which we made in our native Russian language. It is The Spinnaker Magazine — http://spinnaker.com.ua/. Our digital magazine about sailing.
It is the place where we began writing articles and it is a big turn in the kind of content Spinnaker creates.
First Print
That is our favorite milestone of the project. We’ve thought of it a lot and eventually made it on December, 2017.
Thanks to our friends photographers we’ve gathered some really cool images and gathered them to calendar. You can check it here.
The result amazed us. We love print and get something that you can touch and put to the wall at your home is just priceless.
We hope that printing would be a big part of Spinnaker’s evolution.
Blog for Everyone
Our next Spinnaker idea came suddenly and we decided to make the platform where everyone could share own sailing story and communicate with fellow sailors.
It seemed a big task until we found a Medium platform which suited the goal perfectly. That made a beginning of Spinnaker The Sailing Blog.
We encourage sailing enthusiasts to join our community, follow others and share own stories. Let’s spread the spirit of sailing across the globe.
Many thanks to our readers and contributors to The Sailing Blog. That gives us huge motivation to move forward and do more for The Spinnaker.
The Goal
So, today Spinnaker consists of few sub-projects: Spinnaker Instagram, The Sailing Magazine, The Sailing Calendar and The Sailing Blog.
The next steps probably would be making the English version of The Sailing Magazine and doing more prints. Oh yes, we want to print magazines, posters and calendars. But this time we want to find a way to send them to everyone who feels the sailing passion and who considers himself as a part of Spinnaker community.
The project would not live without all our new friends, followers, supporters and contributors. We thank everyone for being with us!!!
Let’s spread the sailing spirit across the globe and let the winds blow our way.
Sincerely yours, Spinnaker team.
P.S. We need your feedback, please. What do you think about the project? What do you feel we could add to Spinnaker? Do you want to contribute to our community in any way? Please share your thoughts and ideas. That would be extremely valuable for us.
