Board Status

So, yes I am a lurker, but I think you guys need to address at what point you give up on the board and either start another one or move to beachcats.

How are facebook discussions going with Mary regarding the board?

Based on info from the community, I'd suspect nothing has happened.

I think you guys should start working on your contingency plan.

just need to reassign a moderator or two, that's all...

I know this platform is old (probably outdated, too), but I do like how the threads are organized to make topics easier to search and keep together.

Yeah, but who is doing that transition??????????????

I think we need to show some kind patience (considering the circumstances)and muddle along in the short-term.

You'r probably right.

But my own mother passed away two weeks ago and as a executor- testamentair I'm used now to make a lot of short-term decisions for her legacy.

The fact that there was no official announcement of Rick's death or any other words from his relatives on this forum, worries me.

I'm happy to be patient

as am I (happy to be patient), and I feel assured that the more technologically inclined folks on this board will figure out the best solution...

A good friend spoke with Dave White (Rick's son) about this and related things recently and learned that Dave has zero interest. I would bet big money the same would be true for Mary. So if anyone is waiting for an interested person to show up, organize, and maintain the forum through a planned intervention, prepare to be disappointed.

I also have inside info as I have friends at UKSC. It's over.

What does it take to operate this forum? Both equipment and time?

That's just what I already suspected from the first moment I heard of Ricks death via Facebook.
I've warned this forum two times for this.

Refering to Rick's financial problems and his struggle to solve them, I expect that the Catsailor shop will also be shut down.

So I assume that the only way to save this forum is somebody and/or group offering the White family a sack of money and buy this forum.

The site is currently hosted by a company called Bayshore solutions in Tampa. Details here: http://toolbar.netcraft.com/site_report?url=http://www.catsailor.com

If we keep it as is, then its probably negligible amount of work to just manage the forum portion. But... someone has to assume responsibility to pay the bills. No idea what they are at the moment. One of the White family would probably need to contact them to find out and then discuss options.


If it is decided that its a good idea to transfer to a new host, I'd guess it would be a week or two of effort if someone was motivated. These would be the estimated costs:

Assuming we want to retain all the current users and historical posts,
The UBB license is $139 (http://www.ubbcentral.com/purchase.php)
Professional transfer service to new host is $150.

Hosting varies - a good estimate is probably around $120/yr

Remaining items/content can be managed via free software (joomla, wordpress, etc.).

Andrew (MN3) can't log in any more (no moderator to let him in). He asked me to suggest that we all contact Damon at TheBeachCats.com and ask him to purchase or take over this board. Otherwise it's going to die and all the old data/posts will be lost.

TheBeachCats website

On a similar note, wrt Rick's DVD and the OnLineMarineStore I got this from Stan at Murrays.
"We have been in contact with Rick's x-wife, but it looks like the courts are involved in the estate and it may be a while before any shipments can be made."

There may be nobody who can make executive decisions for Rick's estate (including this forum) until probate clears. Perhaps the Tampa hosting company could orchestrate a non-hostile takeover by a willing money source. It's not like the forum part has any real monetary value. However, the Online Store being under the masthead name may make it a lot more difficult.

The forum is only one part of the entire Catsailor website. Could it's legacy postings be carved out into a single entity without all the old stuff being lost?

Just an update to let everyone know there is someone working on this.

I've spoken to Mary, and I'm in the process of tracking down everything needed to at least admin the site until something is figured out. unfortunately right now, as far as I've been able to find out, no one has access to the admin of this site and no one is reading email sent to @catsailor.com email addresses.

The one thing I don't want to happen is for the site to just disappear one day and all content lost, which is what will happen if nothing is done.

I'll keep everyone updated if I make progress.

I think the archives to the "sailing related" forums are priceless in the information they contain for the multi-hull community. I'm willing to donate to a cause to keep this thing going in the interest of preservation, at least for the time needed to sort out the estate, pay host, get permissions, admin access, etc.

Damon has already done a great job archiving the old "on the wire" BB within TheBeachcats. (great stuff in there btw)

Oh, there's a $$$ bonus to ban rstuvw798643 & hobie1616.

You must be one of them tea bagger traitors.

Sounds mostly positive, I'll stump up some money to help with the transfer as for admin we could just nominate some old hands as moderators to approve any new members, not too hard to ask some questions of aspiring new members.

like where to find cheap NFL jerseys?

Hello everyone, hope some of you are watching this topic for updates.

It's taken a combination of detective work and persistence but I'm making progress and am in touch with the right people to make sure this website doesn't just disappear.

If you have interest in helping out, whether with time or money, please contact me directly via email. I don't want to share details yet since not much is settled. But what I have accomplished so far is that the site will not vanish at the stroke of midnight tonight.

Please email me at
-------------------
damon

at

thebeachcats.com
---------------

Hello Damon,

We have spoken before a few years ago.
First thanks for all your trouble you have taken so far in order saving this forum.

I detected that technically not everything is still working 100%. Viewing member profiles is impossible.

Ofcourse I'm willing to help financially, but I rather do these things in the open air, instead off the closed doors of email.

I think it should be a joint action off all the members.

thanks for stepping up Damon, I'll email you

I agree and will make a public statement and request for help soon. There have been a lot of moving parts to this and I want to make sure I am 100% on firm ground before I make any statements. Hope you understand.

Once I can "go public" I'll be as transparent as possible.

Damon,

Thanks for stepping up... I can shove scheckels your way to keep this going..

Let us know.

John

Hey everyone reading,
I just sent Damon a check to help pay his expenses to get control of this forum. I e-mailed him as he suggested to learn what is happening and to get his address to send the check. I have directly benefitted from using this website and The Beachcats website (the one Damon already hosts) so I let him know that it was payback rather than charity. He let me know that the website is currently 4 months in arrears so that is the first payment to make and once he pays that the current host will be pretty easy to deal with for Damon to get control. He will know how much more is needed soon and when that is settled he can go public but why wait for him to put all the cash up front? Please join me in contributing if you can. Damon will appreciate it and this forum will soon be much more usable. He specifically told me that the first he would do is get rid of the spam but he will also archive all of the useful info shared here over the years just as he has done on his website with the "On The Wire" magazine. Again, If you want more details and an address, send Damon an e-mail.
Thanks to anyone else who contributes!

Thanks Mike,

I now have full access to this forum, you might notice already a lack of NFL Jerseys for sale. ;-) Hope you all got your bargains while you could.

Basically, for anyone interested, I've received permission from Mary Wells and Rick's son Dave White to take over the Catsailor.com and related domains and content.

I was able to negotiate with the hosting company where Rick was paying for a virtual server, and some other services, to reduce the outstanding balance from $820 down to $432 which I paid them today.

Of course that's just the start, but that's what I'm out of pocket right now.

Since I've only had access for a few hours I don't know everything that can be done, but figured the first priority was to clean up the spam that was choking the forums.

If anyone has input on what they would like done or wants to help, or needs my address to send a check, please email me directly at:

damon
at
thebeachcats
dot
com

This email address works for PayPal too, just put in the payment "Support for Catsailor.com".

If you need to talk to me by phone, please call my voip voicemail at 901-310-9092 and leave a message with your name, (and username here if it's not obvious), number, and best time to call back on US Central Time.

Wow, that was fast! Thanks, Damon! Literally, my check is in the mail.

There are probably a lot of members that haven't been visiting lately because of the spam and other issues, please everyone that is here spread the word that Catsailor.com is back online.

great job!!! thanks

Damon, thank you.

Damon-

First off - many thanks. I am super happy you stepped in.

You've probably already thought of this, but I'll come out and suggest consolidation of hosting. We can keep the catsailor.com domain, etc. but keeping commonly maintained accounts on multiple hosts is redundant. It would save a huge amount of money to bring them together.

I am more than happy to assist either with my checkbook or with time.

Thanks, I hope I haven't taken on too much. I haven't even had time to really think about what happens going forward. My first priority was to make sure the site didn't go away.

It would have shut down completely on March 8th if nothing had been done.

Since I got full control about 36 hours ago I've spent most of those hours working on the site to find out what is there, cleaning up the spam, and fixing or removing (literally thousands) of broken links and old code that was lurking behind the scenes. I've contacted the UBB Threads people but haven't heard back to find out if this forum software has an up to date license so it can be upgraded.

Since the OnlineMarineStore.com is no more I removed hundreds of links and banners to it that just led to "not found" pages.

As far as I could tell all the advertisements on this site were for the OnlineMarineStore.com, if anyone knows about advertisers please let me know, that would be a big help. Ultimately for the site to pay for itself I'll need direct advertisers. I've put on a few Google Adsense ads for now but frankly the traffic on this site is extremely low right now, so I don't expect much from them.

It's understandable that the traffic was low with Rick's death, winter time, and the massive spam attack, but pleas spread the word to regulars that may not by visiting to stop by and check things out.



Well yes, that is the plan, in fact it's a requirement. I've got until March 8th, maybe a few more days, because I paid the current server and email provider their past due monthly fees. They initially told me it would take $820 for them to give access (even with permission from the family) but they did negotiate it down to $432 which I paid them yesterday.

Anyway, hello to all the Catsailor.com folks who may not know me that well. I've posted a message on the front page of this site as well as a PayPal donate button. (Not a tax deductible donation, just helping out because you want to.)

If anyone is wondering what I've received so far, it's $10 via PayPal (Thanks Terry!) and two promised checks from Mike Fahle and northsea_junkie.

For any folks outside the USA that want to use wire transfer, please send me an email to damon at thebeachcats dot com and I'll supply anything you need.

I don't know what the hosting requirements for the site are, but I have some free space, bandwidth, and database on my webhost. As long as it functions and doesn't exceed my plan's limits, I'd be willing to host catsailor.com.

Regards,
Eric

Thanks for the offer, somewhere in my last long post I forgot to mention that I have web servers available. While I don't sell hosting to the public I do host my own clients sites as well as TheBeachcats.com .

A site like this really can use a lot of resources and takes a lot of maintenance to keep running properly.

That is why I use a dedicated server to run TheBeachcats.com and Rick had this site on a $200 per month Cloud Server (Virtual Server). These aren't like small business "menu" sites where a 1,000 of them can run on one box.

Damon thx for keeping everything running!
Have you also gotten access to the Catsailor Facebook account, it has a few thousand members which could help drive traffic.

Hi Damon,
Awesome work, it would be great if you could keep catsailor.com going. I mostly frequent the beachcats site but have also greatly benefitted from following various discussions about cats here. I just sent you my little contribution so that you have some peace of mind going forward.
Happy Sailing!
Marek

Hey Damon,

Contribution coming...

As a thought for a fund raiser our local school has a Platinum Club Gold Club, Silver Club for PTA donations that will list out who the donors are for each tier. Funny how people get competitive when it come to giving money..let alone sailing boats.

Maybe list out those that give a certain amount to keep this thing going...

Ulysses Grant is on his way to Memphis Guru....

Thanks Damon

how do we do the paypal thing?

And I vote for a review board set up that will "fine" every political (or blatantly non-sailing) post $0.10 payable to the "fund" to keep the site alive.

A few of those threads could have generated quite a bit of dough... And a fee to post drivel might keep some of it down...

For PayPal, if you are a PayPal user you can just send money to
damon
at
thebeachcats
dot
com

If not, you can use a credit card directly by using the PayPay donation button on the front page of Catsailor.com. .

I'll be doing some forum reorganization to make things easier and very soon you will see only sailing on the sailing forums. :-)

I see some of the changes already. Thanks!

Is there a "For Sale/Trade" section? So people can BUY AN AD?

I'm Back!!!

Glad to see my old boss at BayShore Solutions was able to help and very glad to see Damon was able to get the site turned over

How come you couldn't get in Andrew?

For now the buy/sell classifieds are the classifieds on TheBeachcats.com here.
http://www.thebeachcats.com/classifieds/

And you don't even have to pay to place an ad there right now.

To welcome all the Catsailor.com regulars I've set all the ads to the low price of FREE during March. (regular $10 for boats and $5 for parts)

So try them out, clear out those extra boats and parts lying around.

And I haven't had time to deal with it yet, but I will be looking for business sponsors and banner advertisers for both sites.

Right now I only have an adrate sheet for TheBeachcats.com, see it here.
http://www.thebeachcats.com/adrates.htm

Welcome back and thanks very much for all your help last week. I haven't been able to figure out how to connect you back with your old posts, but it might be possible.

Short answer: I am willing to cut my nose off to spite my face.
Long answer: I had issues with this website's SPAM policy (continuing to spam me despite repeated attempts to unsubscribe). This is my profession (email marketing and dev), I take it (a little too) seriously.

After all communications and passive methods failed, I took a stand and insisted he remove my account

Glad to help (and save the wealth of knowledge this site has)!
Don't forget i want 1/2 the profits !!! (jk)

Don't worry or work too hard about connecting my old posts, I have an aggressive plan to regain TOP POSTER status in 4 weeks time - Anyone need a Cheap Jersey? I started a company you may have seen on this site ...

deleted

As you revamp the forum, are you planning to give some attribution to Rick White, as the originator of the forum?

It could be called "Rick White's Catamaran Sailor." (Sorta like Dave Clark's Rockin' Eve.) Or maybe a history page about Rick? Other ideas, folks?

Please let there still be room in a a dark corner for non sailing discussions, funny facts etc. (no advertisement).

Like the "test" thread.

Otherwise I would miss these moments of excitement and wondering about the world outside sailing.
Which is observed by and recorded by sailors

Yes, I have in mind naming the main general sailing forum something like
Rick White Memorial Forum

Although that sounds too formal and kind of sad.

I'll take suggestions on that.

Maybe we can have a poll when the dust settles, having some trouble getting the site moved because of several really large topics that go back years and contain all kinds of (bad) html. (I'm looking at you test forum) ;-)

Yes, Since you asked so nicely (and made a major cash donation )

I'm running into a problem with the really gigantic topics, might have to lock some of them and let new ones be started in the "Politics Religion, and Trolling" forum.

How about calling it, "Rick White's Racing Forum" with a short bio of Rick stuck to the top post for a general forum, then all the different racing class forums under that?

It's under the "Politics, Religion and Trolling" thread. Enjoy!

Yes, the "test" thread has some real gems in it. The "Drill" and "Media" threads... not so much.

Maybe there's folks out there with the expertise to answer, but could this forum be set up as a 501(c)(3) in order to help generate donations (as this would be a tax-deduction for USA folk)?

not that it matters much in my case, but some daddy-warbucks type (Ding) may see the benefit when dropping those large steamer trunks of cash at your door.

Prefaced by IANAL,

I've considered this over the years with TheBeachcats.com but having been involved in a number of non-profits, you need to be bigger than beachcat sailing for it to help. People are going to help or they aren't. Now if you are big enough to get corporate donations, they do favor registered non-profits for the tax and publicity factors.