TOPIC: bump the whole forum

This forum seems to have alot of great information with a long history. However it does not seem to be very active now. I know it isnt for everyone as not everyone is into classic boats or working on them etc. People would rather spend there money on a brand new boat now adays. However would anyone have any ides to make this a more active forum again. I just joined a few days ago but it seems that alot of the threads there are 5+ years old. Just some food for thought is all.

Charles,
I understand the feeling. Part of the issue is there are people like me who have a project boat to work on but it's a future project after other more important things in my life get completed, so I have no real movement.

I think the biggest problem of all are two points:
1 - Facebook. Forums are a dying breed as everyone has left for FB groups instead. And this is a DAMN shame. Facebook cannot begin to provide the wealth of knowledge and assistance that the forum platform provides. I check out the Glasspar FB page now and then, but it's literally just people showing pictures of their boats, boats for sale, and that's about it. There's almost no help to be had.

2 - Age. I am fairly young at 45 to be into old vintage Fiberglass boats. I'd expect the age of many members of this site to average closer to 65+, as these were the folks who were more likely to have been around these boats when they were abundant. Some of them are less interested than they used to be, some who are in the restoration business are looking to retire, and some have sadly left us.

I too concern myself with the continuation of this site and hope it will stick around for my own restoration project. It is a fantastic resource of information. As one member told me recently, "We old farts are the only ones who worked on these things!" so when they go, so too does the knowledge. Think of it this way...it's generational. Like with classic cars...everything has it's time in the sun. As a kid in the 1980's car shows were full of 1930's hot rods....but many of the people who loved them are now gone, and younger generations have no interest in them. The sad reality. I feel it's probably the same with Fiberglassics.

Best we can do is keep posting!
Eric

I am in the same boat (no pun intended haha) my project boat is a after the kids go to bed a couple hours a week if I'm lucky.

It really is a shame this forum has a 25 year history with mountains of information on it. At least there's such a huge library of stuff on here that there's plenty of reading material and writeups on restoration.

I have also kind of noticed that as well as i am 30 and nobody near my age even has the idea or ambition to spend the time to rebuild an "old boat" as they say. I'm a toolmaker so i love tinkering and working with my hands and have access to a full machine shop and fabrication shop so any custom work i can do myself which does help alot.

There will hopefully always be a few members posting and keeping this forum "alive" but it would be nice if it were as active as it seemed to be 5+years ago. It also doesnt help that people dont see classic boats as they do classic cars where alot of people are willing to put the time and money into restoring them.

Vincent

So I still check the forum every night but I don't post much, sorry. At this point too many damn honey do projects! I'm at 10.5 years and counting on that damn Century Resorter. It's hard to work on it other than weekends and I'm way behind on updating pics to my resto thread. I do really miss the chat's on Tuesday's. I quit looking becasue I was the only one there anymore.

Bob

This place is great, the knowledge and friendliness shared here is abundant. Sometimes its slow, and never half as busy as facebook. I always see forums mentioned like this on facebook, I bet that is the abundance of unregistered visitors that come on here just to use the forums as a library and dont normally get in here to ask questions or anything else. we just have to do what we are doing here to keep the place alive. Keep replying to posts, keep creating new ones. go ahead and join a facebook group and point people to this forum for information, and recommend they register, and ask questions here. I had a year and a half project that I recorded on here and got some great advice along the way, and with almost 12K views, I think that is pretty cool. Fiberglassics isnt Facebook but it isnt dead either. When we loose the older generation who has the most knowledge on these great boats, it will be a tragedy in more than one sense. But we have an opportunity here where they can share their information before they go to the big lake in the sky. If you think about it, these forums are a blessing. It is much more easy to access information today than it was 30 or 40 years ago. Think of all the knowledge that was lost over them years by people who did the work, but didnt have the format we have today to record and share our knowledge.

I totally understand the fact that the forum is slow and i do really enjoy going back and reading old posts. It just makes me wish i was able to join it 10 years ago when it was a lot more active is all. I get it thought the same happens with me life gets in the way and at the end of the day a boat let alone a project boat isn't the most important thing. who knows maybe this being a small community is better then it being a large one. I know i tried joining another forum before this one and didn't meet one friendly person there that had the same vision i do for my boat.