I've been contemplating creating an app/website to facilitate a more open sailing community for managing sailing events. The idea is to focus on the events initially rather than forums/chat etc as there is already a number of forums that exist which don't have huge user bases to begin with.

Basically people would use it to organise random events that the general sailing community would be interested in, perhaps private events could be added in the future. One example might be, Bob lists an event "Sailing Port Jackson to Broken Bay", depart Sunday 10am, eta 3pm, event cancelled if wind > 25 knots. Finish with BBQ at the basin.

Or perhaps, someone could create a custom race circuit with virtual waypoints, and have a preset start time, or just individually timed runs around the course.

My main motivation is currently this is mainly organised by sailing clubs, so they are restricted to smaller geographic areas, smaller numbers of potential participants and somewhat hamstrung by governance issues, memberships, bureaucracy etc.

The plan would be to make the platform global, support all regions, but obviously only show your local region if that's all your interested in. Without getting too technical, the platform would be open and run by the community, the problem with websites like Seabreeze is if the owner shuts it down we lose the forum, the platform i'm thinking about would live on as long as at least one participant maintains it.

It would be great if it could somehow make some money to fund its future development, but that's a challenge for future broke me.

Thoughts, feedback, suggestions?

One thing that comes to mind is maybe Sailing is too niche, maybe the app can support many types of events, and sailing is just one type.

Is this something that could already be achieved by posting an Event for a Facebook Group?

Yeah I guess so Microbe, but I don't use Facebook, is there much of a sailing community on Facebook?

I'm a big proponent of reducing our dependence on those large tech platforms, so i'd still prefer something more independent.

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NickButtons said..
"is there much of a sailing community on Facebook?"

as an example: I am 1of3 who manage/moderate a FB group, in this case for Sydney Harbour. We have a large community who regularly post about their travels - planned and past, events, community PSA, even a flapping sail or a sinking dinghy. Members join because they want to share. We are but one of many, many, many similar groups.

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NickButtons said..
Yeah I guess so Microbe, but I don't use Facebook, is there much of a sailing community on Facebook?

I'm a big proponent of reducing our dependence on those large tech platforms, so i'd still prefer something more independent.

sailing on FB, yes