UK Coastal Atlas of Recreational Boating 

The RYA has mapped leisure boating activity in order to help protect your boating from the increasing pressure of competing commercial, environmental and leisure interests around the UK coast. It is vital that leisure boating interests are represented effectively to ensure that Government, in all its forms, takes full account of our activities when balancing these competing interests.

Since 2004 the RYA has been collecting information about boating in the UK in order to get a good picture of the spread of clubs and marinas as well as the areas which are most used for sailing, racing and passage-making. This helps the RYA to understand which areas are most important to the sport and to our members so that we can work to protect them. Important areas could for example be valued club sailing or racing areas, a busy anchorage or an essential route which is the safest way to make passage between two locations. The information gathered also effectively demonstrates the relative density of sailing activity around the UK.

This provides us with a powerful tool to help protect the areas which are most important to leisure boaters. Using all the data we acquired, the RYA put together the UK Coastal Atlas of Recreational Boating which has proved to be vital when representing leisure boating interests. It is taken into account when new developments are proposed along the coast and offshore and ensures we have a seat at the table when discussions about navigational safety are under way.

The Atlas is used by government, local authorities, marine licensing authorities and renewable energy developers to name a few. It has also been shared with the general lighthouse authorities and the Maritime and Coastguard Agency (MCA) to help improve the safety of leisure boaters at sea and is used to inform marine planning processes.

The next edition

We are currently updating the Atlas and will be asking RYA affiliated clubs to verify the areas they have previously identified as their key cruising and racing areas. We are also strengthening what we already know by using amalgamated Automatic Identification System (AIS) - an automatic tracking system - data (sailing and pleasure craft categories) to examine the pattern of recreational vessel density around the UK.

This new dataset is incredibly robust because it is based on real-life passages and accurately portrays the course over ground of thousands of recreational vessels regardless of differing weather conditions. As a result it provides us with an excellent picture of UK cruising activity.

Being able to show the AIS density data is particularly useful to us when mapping offshore developments alongside recreational activity as the boating data is displayed as a heat map (a range from light to heavy traffic) rather than as individual lines on maps as in our current Atlas. This means when showing recreational activity on a chart it doesn't appear to be confined to distinct routes with gaps in between.

There are also limitations to this dataset however as the majority of recreational craft, as far as we know, do not yet have AIS equipment (transceivers and transponders) on board and if they do, they may not be used for short journeys or those which are close inshore. As a result, if we do not have AIS data covering a particular area such as a bay, we recognise this does not mean recreational craft do not visit the area.

The RYA UK Coastal Atlas of Recreational Boating is available on CD from the environment team at the RYA. The GIS data is also available under annual licence. Please contact us for further information at environment@rya.org.uk.