This site hosts a historical record of the National School Sailing Association.
It will always be under development with new items added as they become available. Documents are facsimiles, they are scanned using an OCR programme, the PDF is then edited in a DTP programme and the final PDF produced. Some errors are introduced in this process and some are in the original document.
In the late 1950's sailing was reaching the masses. Schools were building boats as part of woodwork lessons and enthusiasts were taking children sailing.George Patterson from Essex and Terry White in Northampton independently wrote suggesting some sort of organisation for schools might be a good idea. On January 6th a meeting was held in Caxton Hall London for interested parties (See TES Report).
From this a group was formed to consider how such an organisation might be formed, the group met at the RYA Headquarters, then in Victoria Street London and with the help of Martin Beale of the RYA, Mervin Palmer - The Chief Education Officer for Hastings and Harry Cross.
A constitution, terms of reference etc were drawn up and the first formal meeting of the NSSA Committee took place on 11th Feb 1961. The first Annual General Meeting was held on 19th of January 1962 at Friends House, opposite Euston Station
Regattas sprang from informal gatherings of sailors at Grendon Hall in Northamptonshire.