REVIEW: 'The water is open' website

The Water is Open is a new website by blueseventy which they describe as:

The site covers world-wide news, events, results and hall-of-fame members. A new ranking list for open water swimmers is set to also be launched, scoring athletes based on performances around the world.

There’s also an option to track key events, such as the forthcoming World Championships in Rome, live via Twitter. 22,000 people followed the open water events during the Beijing Olympics without the service having been having been heavily promoted.

So I took it for a test drive: The page is compact and will visually work well on a laptop. The two sections that really stood out for me were: Events and Results, but as mentioned above other content includes News, Rankings, and Hall of Fame.

blueseventy openly acknowledges that they own the site so this is not an "astroturf site" but rather a "grassroots" contribution. I have a sneaky suspicion that Steve Munatones is helping out so that in itself is quite an endorsement if I am correct.

I will say this, the first thing I clicked on, I learned something new. It is called The Beaufort Wind Force Scale which measures sea conditions on a scale of 0-12 with zero being glassy and 12 listed as: "Ride of the Valkyries." (Just kidding, number 12 on the Beaufort Wind Force Scale is 14-meter-plus surf with foam and spray permeating the air but more bluntly, your standard issue big hurricane.

The Beaufort Wind Force Scale (also known as the Beaufort Scale) is a widely-used empirical measure for describing wind velocity based mainly on observed sea conditions. For example, it is used in the following context: The referee made reference to the Beaufort Scale when he made the public announcement about the abandonment of the world championship race.

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Finally, the site is new so some of the content has to be fleshed out like the Rankings page which empty right now but the rest of the site has valuable info and I definitely have it bookmarked.

For promoters of open water races, I think this site will be vital.