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. :-)