Olderboater

"Marmot was another great tech brain."

I momentarily forgot his screen name, but it was Marmot that I was referring to in calling him by his street name of Rick.

I never mind/minded the contentious replies by any of my "favorites" because I could always trust validity somewhere in the reasoning. It is arguing for the sake or proving oneself right or needing to substantiate bravado that becomes antithetical to inviting subsequent posts.

Capt Ralph in a recent thread on the safety of the Bahamas you say he is just taking a break. Do you have more information

Moderators- can we please shut this down and remove the thread. The fact is that Olderboater is no longer contributing to YF. In a June Private Message to me he said that he may stop posting on YF, so I have a reasonable amount of confidence that he hasn't met a sudden demise. Let's get back to talking about yachts rather than talking about people.

Well said Ken.

I'm not pointing fingers, but this has run it's course and isn't a useful conversation.

There are members that are concerned about olderboater suddenly disappearing. Just the same with you and others that are known contributors to this forum.

I find some of the comments in this thread to be unfounded and unnecessary. OB's knowledge and insight was far beyond a keyword search but his lengthy dissertations may have turned off some readers. I've spoken with people that avoided posting because they grew tired of being drawn into debates with him. Behind the screen, OB regularly complained about other members and how we ran the forums. A few months ago, I finally stopped responding to his constant barrage of complaints and he became angry. Whatever his story, he made a contribution to the yacht-collective and it's forever etched in our archives. We owe him a debt of gratitude. We also owe him the respect of a contributing member who is not here to defend himself. That said, here's what I know...

Whenever he logged on as Belle, he would log off as OB. In fact, the last post he made to YF was under Belle on June 24th and (s)he was expressing his discontent with YF...

https://www.yachtforums.com/threads/boat-crash-off-key-biscayne.36270/page-2#post-331999

While OB's knowledge stands on its own merit, his story of being in the federal witness protection program was not. As a forum administrator, I can see the IP address that members log on from. For years his IP addresses were based out of Plano,TX even though he claimed to be in different ports around the world. I assumed he was using a land based server he accessed remotely while cruising, but then I would see logs from T-mobile in the Plano area which means he wasn't anywhere near water. The last IP recorded was from Baylor Health Care Systems in Dallas. There's a probability that he has suffered a health issue (see attached screen shot).

Whatever the reason for his disappearance, OB's knowledge was real but IMO the rest of his story was not. In fact, I told Judy a few years ago that I suspected OB could be an AI program because he had access to information that wasn't necessarily public. Couple this with 20,000 posts between two different forums and you have to wonder how he found time to run multiple companies, cruise around the world, etc. His complaints about other members makes the AI argument mute. He was a real person, but not necessarily real.

This post is being made to inform the participants in this thread, but I think we can all agree that it should be removed. It's bad refection on all of us as a community.

Carl

I believe I addressed this...

transparency maintained with many OB questions answered, nicely done by the valuable contributing YF posters along with the behind scenes YF staff.
nautical lore or perhaps in this case (a myth and mystery) shall remain and will always pique our interests, as for myself i will continue to enjoy the wealth of info and knowledge found on the YF pages .
let's not forget "saltwater rusts and alcohol preserves"
so Cheers
Scott

I'll second that.