Open Water Swimming Website Concept

1. Problem

It is difficult to find the best spots nearby for open water swimming. In order to currently determine if a lake is suitable you must first know the lake exists, check lakebrowser for water quality, check rules on boat traffic, check depth maps, try to find water temp, and try your best to determine if there is a possible entry location. Even after doing this, there are many additional factors you simply do not know until you get there. This can be especially a problem with swimming in rivers, where it is impossible to know what is swimmable and what is safe to swim.

I am primarily concerned with open water swimmers, but the same problems apply to kayakers, canoers, paddleboarders, freedivers, spearfishers, ice dippers, wild swimmers, nude swimmers, and beachgoers.

2. Solution

There must exist a website as a central database for open water swimming information. The website needs an interactive map that shows lakes color coded based on how good they are for open water swimming.

Zooming in on a lake will show marked entry locations and a depth map. Clicking on a lake will show a page with an overall rating and reviews from users.

Data on water clarity/quality, the depth map, and possibly beach entries will be pulled from existing online databases.

Additional entry locations, unknown beaches, lake rules, boat traffic, and other lake information will be gathered from users.

It could be possible to allow activity connections to try to build heatmaps.

Such an app could make non-motorized water sports more accessible for more people, as well as protect people from contaminated water, boat traffic, currents, and other safety issues. It can also connect people to swim partners, swim clubs, and organized open swims.

Location will be just Minnesota to start.

3. Existing Resources

There exists nothing that does this. Some of the individual information can be found across the web, but not together and with user reviews.

5. Feasibility

Domains Available:

owsfinder.com for $14/year

Hosting Cost:

Likely about $80 per year

Challenges:

I can code but I am far from a pro and nothing web development. Enabling user reviews and pulling data from other databases will be a challenge. A lot of mapping tools are sure to already exist that can be pulled from. It is doable but it will be a challenge

6. Business Plan

There is no plan to make any money, it would just be for fun. It will be pretty niche and not highly used. Can start with a donation page to try to cover hosting and domain cost. If it pops off, there would be the possibility of ads, but I probably wouldn’t do that. Getting sponsorships from outdoor brands or referral links would be more likely.