5.5 Inventory (refit)

“5.5 Inventory” is a nautical heritage conservation project created to build up a worldwide database of the « 5.5 meter » racing yachts, one of the International Sailing Class that has given rise to more than 800 different original boats since the first design in 1937. As a former naval architect, I once had to collect information for the design of a new keel for a 5.5m IC, and I had to collect drawings, pictures and classification certificates from various sources all over the world (Finland, Australia, Switzerland, etc.), when the idea came up to create a wiki where everyone could participate by adding information. The first version of this wiki-type Inventory has begun in November 2005, and, since that date, ca. 6’086 documents, links and infos have been already uploaded and made accessible freely to everybody via the web. 130 designers, 183 boat builders and more than 1’550 owners over almost 34 countries to date have been inventoried and identified. The writing code for the first version became completely obsolete, so the site had to be completely rewritten (mainly for security reasons), while recovering the complete original database, photos, notes, etc.