Hello all,
To begin, please know we have input everyone of our ~8,800 boats into our database by hand. One boat at a time. We’ve been at it for almost 20 years now. We have not taken any other person’s work by scraping servers or accessing any other database. Trust us, we know how difficult and time consuming building a database like this can be.
That said… We have not set up API access to our database yet. It could happen later this year though. Full disclosure… our intension will be to charge for that access. If you have a specific project like a membership application for a club, you are of course, welcome to use the information on our site to manually build your database. If you want to save time and electronically auto-populate your application by accessing our servers, we do not think it unreasonable to ask for a small fee for easy access to, and retrieval of, our 20 years of work.
Something like creating a database of all boats with a SA/D between 18-21 (1,732 records including boats between 12’ to over 80’, built beginning in the late 1800’s through today), sounds more like a commercial use project to us. We are all for people starting businesses. But again, we feel it is reasonable to charge for access to information we have literally spent decades compiling. Especially if in doing so, that access makes your business better.
And don’t forget, there’s always the option of using Sailboatdata.com as a reference tool. You might like to know we are on the verge of launching a new updated site. Included will be the option to register and create a “Favorites” page, allowing users to save a specific group of boats for easy, personal access.
One last note, responding to a comment above, it is unlikely we will be adding information on how a keel is attached. Sorry. We do however, include ballast material on a record when we find it. If ballast material is not stated on a boat record, it’s because we did not find that information reported when we created the record.
Hope all this helps.
