About YachtPals

Guide/Book Page

About YachtPals

OK, so here's what happened:

Some cruising friends were sitting around, and someone said something along the lines of: "I wish there was a website where people could look up cruisers."

We thought: simple database, pretty easy.

Then we thought: 'do people think of cruisers by boat, or by name?' and as it turns out, based on a very tedious and formal survey conducted on the docks, people think of some friends (often those they have cruised with) by boat, and others (like people from the docks and/or the yacht club) by name. So as we thought about the database, we thought:

wouldn't it be nice if people could each have their own page?

and wouldn't it be nice if each boat could have it's own page, too?

how about blogs, for each user AND each boat?

how about forums, both user-moderated and open?

how about a newsfeed with boating news?

what about uploading and embedding pictures and video?

what if people want to collaborate?

how about making buddies and buddy lists?

what about groups (for boats, clubs, races, crews)?

what if you could tag everything with keywords and link users?

and it goes on and on.

So, as often happens, the site has 'evolved' before ever even launching. What was once going to be a little database is now a social community site. The potential of the design is in the millions of users range, the backbone is updateable and open-ended to allow for future additions and improvements, and the complexity is such that we can't even begin to predict the directions YachtPals might take.

Our hope is that people will find a niche here. Make some friends, share advice and swap questionable stories. We hope you'll join us for this experiment, and above all, we hope you have fun at YachtPals.