A Cape Dory Chat room?

[Bob Ohler]

Is it feasible? Ever had 5 minutes in a day when all you wanted to do was either go sailing or talk about our boats? Just 5 minutes of a return to sanity? Walt, Catherine could we do it? Could it be a part of this site? I know there are other sailors out there that sign on to this site just to relax and unwind for a minute or two. To spend those minutes talking about sail trim on a cutter, or when to reef, or how to bleed the fuel system on a Yanmar? Or a favorite anchorage, or a favorite boat, or a fantasy boat, or the most memorable sail. Mine? You'll have to wait for the chat room to ask me!
Bob Ohler
sv "Aloha Spirit"



bobohler@chesapeake.net

[Mark Yashinsky]

W/ the message board, you can check it at anytime, post at anytime, and, if you include the archives, have a tremendous, searchable, trove of information. What if, in 6 months, to find out about swapping self tailing winches for non-tailing (see previous thread). You can do it. Can you do this w/ the chat rooms??? Will you have enough people together at the same time??? You got 5 minutes, look at the current postings and respond to a few or create a new thread. Just my 2 cents.

[Tom]

Is it feasible? Ever had 5 minutes in a day when all you wanted to do was either go sailing or talk about our boats? Just 5 minutes of a return to sanity? Walt, Catherine could we do it? Could it be a part of this site? I know there are other sailors out there that sign on to this site just to relax and unwind for a minute or two. To spend those minutes talking about sail trim on a cutter, or when to reef, or how to bleed the fuel system on a Yanmar? Or a favorite anchorage, or a favorite boat, or a fantasy boat, or the most memorable sail. Mine? You'll have to wait for the chat room to ask me!
Bob Ohler
sv "Aloha Spirit"

There apparently isn't enough memory available to have a chat room on this site. If you want to try one why not set one up on your website and be the webmaster yourself? See if it goes. Personally I don't like the chatroom format. I think the BB is better. It's also been suggested in the past that there be a section on tings that owners have devised for CDs such as how to store anchors, or build propane lockers etc. No memory available for that either. Perhaps it's just as well. If it ain't broke, don't try to fix it. We've got the best BB on the net that I've found. JMHI



TomCambria@mindspring.com

[John H]

Bob, I couldn't help but notice the juxtaposition of the sale notice for Aloha Spirit and your yearning for Cape Dory chat. I hope your future sailing will not be purely virtual!



jhalpo@javanet.com

[Mario]

There is a free service to do just this. It used to be called "e-groups" until Yahoo bought it out, but it allows chat, file exchanges, newsletters and more. For more info, go to

http://groups.yahoo.com/local/news.html

W/ the message board, you can check it at anytime, post at anytime, and, if you include the archives, have a tremendous, searchable, trove of information. What if, in 6 months, to find out about swapping self tailing winches for non-tailing (see previous thread). You can do it. Can you do this w/ the chat rooms??? Will you have enough people together at the same time??? You got 5 minutes, look at the current postings and respond to a few or create a new thread. Just my 2 cents.

CapeDory252@aol.com

[Dan H]

Is it feasible? Ever had 5 minutes in a day when all you wanted to do was either go sailing or talk about our boats? Just 5 minutes of a return to sanity? Walt, Catherine could we do it? Could it be a part of this site? I know there are other sailors out there that sign on to this site just to relax and unwind for a minute or two. To spend those minutes talking about sail trim on a cutter, or when to reef, or how to bleed the fuel system on a Yanmar? Or a favorite anchorage, or a favorite boat, or a fantasy boat, or the most memorable sail. Mine? You'll have to wait for the chat room to ask me!
Bob Ohler
sv "Aloha Spirit"

My two cents. I'm with Tom and others. I prefer this format, and the ability to search for the valuable advice and experiences within is extremely valuable. Having said that, I have an idea. It some times takes too long or times out on my standard dial-up when searching. What I propose is that we consider converting this treasure of information to a proper database. I would love to hear comments on this idea. If the interest is there, I'd be willing to take the lead on doing a feasability study. Whatta' ya' say gang?



djhhan@aol.com

[Walt Bilofsky (Webmaster)]

<snip> It some times takes too long or times out on my standard dial-up when searching. What I propose is that we consider converting this treasure of information to a proper database. I would love to hear comments on this idea. If the interest is there, I'd be willing to take the lead on doing a feasability study. Whatta' ya' say gang?

People may not have noticed, but the searches are much faster since the new server came on line about three weeks back (and the subsequent problems got dealt with). Searches that used to take 10 - 20 cpu seconds (and much longer real time) now take 2 - 3 cpu seconds.

Admittedly the searches could be more intelligent.

One alternative is to have a Frequently Asked Questions web page. But perhaps there is so much information that a FAQ would be unwieldy.

Another alternative might be a cross-index to the most valuable of the archived messages, by topics. That would have the advantage of putting the reader into the middle of threads where more comments could be found. The archive format is pretty simple, and it's a text file. So possibly someone who wanted to read the archive and prepare an index could do it simply by reading the file in Microsoft Word or some such. It's up over 18 megabytes, but Word will handle that.



bilofsky@toolworks.com

[Jon]

Perhaps we could have a designated meet time at an established sailing oriented chat room, such as the Boat US one at:

http://www.boatus.com/scripts/clubhouse/clubhouse.asp

You can try it out by clicking the link below.

Jon
s/v Sovereign



Ringj@mediaone.net