Why do sailing web sites suck so much (blogs excepted)

Let me start with a disclosure. I am an Internet professional. OK that's an oxymoron. What I meant to say was that I work for a company that designs and builds web sites for a living. The thing that amazes me is that most professional (and I use the term loosely) sailing web sites are truly mediocre with the exception of blogs (more on that later). I went on a search to find the best sailing web site or sailing blog, thinking that the established media would do the best job. Lets start with doing a Google search of the word sail. Sail mag of course comes up top. While I subscribe to their print magazine as it does a nice job of covering a wide range of aspects of sailing, the Web site is awful. It's basically some bits of the magazine posted to the web. All the other US magazines are equally crap. These so called companion sites do very little online in relation to what they could be doing. These guys just don't seem to get the potential. The only sailing mag that I have found that has made an effort is Yachting and Boating World, aka ybw.com. This is what is known in the biz as the portal approach, IE they have taken all their mags and aggregated them into one site organized by category and information type. At least it's a different experience than reading the individual magazine companion sites. That said, it's still a bit boring and there are better places to get the info they're putting out. For me the most disappointing is Latitudes and Attitudes. It's my favorite sailing mag. I love their boats, birds and booze format. It's a lad mag for the salty set. The thing I love about the magazine is the down-to earth home feel about the magazine. The "Reader's Wife" on the front always makes me smile. The articles are of variable quality, grammar and spelling but it's a good read. Above all it makes me feel like I am part of a tribe and this is where I am so disappointed by the online experience. L&A's site is like a 1997 high school project gone wrong. For starters they have taken the homemade feel a bit too far. This one looks the sort of site I taught myself to design in 1996 (and let me tell you I am not a designer). But the worst bit about this site like all the other sites is the way they fail to extend their community online. To give them some credit, at least they have a bulletin board. That's more than the other sites have. But come on guys this is 2006. Web 2.0 and all that. If ever site should be a blog it's this one. hey Bob Bitchin, get with the program. This brings me on to sailing blogs. I set mine up about a month ago and it's got me to explore all the great sailing blogs our there. As a blogging community, I think we are pretty small. I did a bit of digging around on Technorati, a site that ranks blogs among other things. It looked to me like the top-rated sailing blog is Proper Course. Tillerman you are in top 25,000 blogs. Given that there are millions of blogs and 70,000 new ones a day this is no small feat. The other site that seems to rank highly is Horse's Mouth. In third place is Frogma. Neither are strictly sailing sites . From what I can tell,  the ranking is based on how many sites link to you. Mine is a measly 1,146,084th ranks blog, so who the hell am I to be commenting. Anyway looks like sailing bloggers have the responsibility to make the web a better place for sailors.