BoatingHQ.ca Is a site that is all about you — at least, that's our hope and our inspiration. We've spent a lot of time over the past weeks and months evaluating the benefits of social media in general, as well as working with some specific clients to that end. But oddly enough, it was through working with a client whose business recently failed that we saw a need in the online community.

Back in late 2004, we were commissioned by Dave de Eyre to work with his General Manager, Mike Burns, to develop a new web presence for Clift's Marine, at the time the biggest yacht brokerage in Canada. Additionally, Mike had put together some ideas for a web-based application to allow brokers from across the province to upload vessel information to the web, with a great deal of information available to their customers, as well even more information viewable only by them.

The challenge was trying to accomplish this with a limited budget. With the help of programmer Shane Chagpar, we decided to modify a real estate module designed to allow realtors to publish real estate listings, into one specifically for power and sail boats. Starting with Mosets Hot Property for the Mambo CMS, we built in a ton of functionality for image-handling and vessel information tracking.We learned a lot, spending countless hours in development, simply because we wanted to make it as good as it could be.

Ultimately, the sheer number of vessels that would pour through the app, (coupled with nearly 400 extra fields of information in a table that wasn't designed to handle one-tenth as many) meant that the site would be overburdened and the database would become massive.

Rainy Days

Sadly, in November of 2007, Dave passed away unexpectedly. A number of projects where put on hold, including revisiting the brokerage application to make it leaner and less resource-heavy. Not long after, Clift's Marine was acquired by Angus Yachts. Angus was predominantly a new vessel dealer, but had a pre-owned brokerage as well. We were asked by the principals there to begin a build on a full-fledged application, where we would design the database from scratch and go through a complete requirement-gathering phase. Finally we thought we were going to have the resources to build a proper vessel showcase. The enthusiasm was short-lived, however, as the perfect storm of a faltering economy, massive currency fluctuations and skyrocketing fuel costs forced Angus Yachts into bankruptcy in late 2008.

Through these experiences, we began to notice that there was more afoot here. Certainly, brokers and boaters wanted to find ways to showcase their vessels. But there was also a great number of people visiting both sites, viewing many pages, sometimes expressing their frustration at the underbuilt apps and other times simply quietly using the scattered resources across the web. It was clear that there was a large group of enthusiasts without a community or central meeting place to share their knowledge about boats. This was the genesis of BoatHQ.ca.

Our hope is to bring together as many boaters as we can, and encourage service-providers and vendors to come to us on our terms. We will keep the site ad-supported, but not with garish in-your-face billboards and banners that make finding the information on the site imp[ractical and uncomfortable. We will simply place relevant ads — hand-picked and hand-designed to suit the aesthetic of the site — in a way that benefits you, the user.

But mostly, we'll listen to you. We'll participate in the conversation and try to work with companies that offer real value to the community. So join in, speak up and have fun. This site should become the most comfortable palce to spend time—when you're not on your boat, at least!