Catbuilder

I too quit posting to Catbuilders threads here when he got all huffy about my suggestion that since he was going to use the boat for commercial purposes he should see if his build should be documented by the Coast Guard as it progressed. What I got was a lecture on how 10 years of boating made him an authority on every aspect of marine applications, from rules and regs to chartering to construction, so I should **** off, he didn't need my suggestions.

I followed along without posting until he left. Then someone asked what happened to him, someone else posted his new location - stuffiminto.com - so I joined there to see how the build was going. I didn't know it at the time, but it turns out he was the owner of the site.

I followed along without posting. Then problems with his marital life happened and he started trashing his wife badly. I finally posted and told him he shouldn't be doing that on the internet. He replied that I knew nothing about it and should mind my own business, so I replied that I had followed his build from the beginning and had advised against it from the start, and that his wife had done her part for three years, funding him, while he made stupid move after stupid move and he should get some dignity and quit telling all his wife's personal problems and blaming her for his failures. So he banned me from his site.

I poked around a little on the www and then found other stuffhewasinto.

http://www.lockergnome.com/uncatego...s-breach-of-privacy-at-stuffimintocom-update/

So for anybody that was a member of his stuffiminto.com site, if you read the other thread here before it was closed,

http://www.boatdesign.net/forums/all-things-boats-and-boating/funding-sources-merged-45665.html

take a guess as to where your membership info might be.

It turns out he also has/had a jobs website, like an employment agency. If I remember correctly, it was also all tied up in his personal computer network. If it was like any other employment agency, Social Security numbers and lots of other personal information for anyone connected to it are now in the hands of who knows who.

 

You are 100% correct Sam.

I also recall he was looking for help- but you'd need to pay "course fees" in order to help him.

I also recall reading about his threats to a member of his site that he knew his IP and would send someone to his house etc etc.

But anyways-I don't care, but it is good to have this down for future posterity.

I wonder what Morelli and Melvin would have to say about his cat...

 

I hate hearing all this; reality sucks sometimes. I'd rather be reading about the steady progress of Catbuilder's project, and eagerly awaiting the day he splashes it.

But I guess it's hardly a perfect world. Nonetheless, I hope he manages to muddle on through and finish the boat.

 

You're more charitable than I am. I don't care if he succeeds or fails.

The thing that got to me was, he got a great deal of information on diesel-electric drive systems, use of 3 phase motors & variable frequency drives, their advantages & limitations. He was clearly ignorant in all of this. Then, after mining a public forum and getting good advice he turns around and says he's figured stuff out, it might have valuable commercial applications, so thanks and that's enough on this thread.

That and a few other like incidents showed he was a taker not a contributor. Then when he really got proven wrong, rather than take it gracefully and learn, he has a big dummy spit, says everyone here are fools and goes elsewhere to better places. Which, it seems, is a place where he can control what gets said and who says it.

So he ends up with what he deserves IMO. If his work quality is good, the boat will get launched, by someone else if not him.

PDW

 

"If every man received his just deserts, we would assuredly all hang."

Of course, I guess it's easy for me to be gracious. I wasn't involved

 

Large projects are difficult if ham handed. Even a relatively small, large project, like yours Troy, requires a great deal of planning and organization. Most of these types of projects fail. They don't get finished and lay around, until economics forces the owner to sell at 1/4 of the materials costs, if they can sell it at all. Catbuilder did have difficulty taking constructive criticism and apparently was easily offended. He also seemed an overly trusting sort, having gotten "had" by hired labor and other individuals, he brought into the project. Personally, I think he just bit on way too much to chew, but he insisted, gave up on his first attempt and plowed along on a second, with techniques he wasn't especially familiar with. Maybe you all remember the need to move the hull and turn it around, but he didn't have the room, nor could figure out how and was contemplating halving the hull?

Because of the scope of these types of projects, relationships with everyone are tested. I gone through some "times" with the other half, but she and I know each other well enough to accept certain things. I'm an exception to the usual, in regard to large projects, I'll get them done, though I may take a bath keeping my word. The reality is, you have to have the "pockets" to eat a project, as much as complete it. No one likes this prospect, but you have to have the "legs" and the pockets, or the first few serious "problems" will bury you financially and ruin relationships. I'm lucky and established enough that I can take a few hits, be pissed about it, but still can carry on. I hope Catbuilder manages to get it completed, though I don't think the few hundred bucks he'll raise, from sympathetic forum members will put much of a dent, in his budgetary restraints. A partner or partnership is likely what he needs. He can buy them out later, once a charter starts paying down his dept. I'm not sure how his personality would work in this type of business relationship, but who knows, he might yet get lucky.

 

Oh Man I hate it when my gut feeling turns out to be right on these things. I stopped by to visit him on my way south last March with the intention of giving him a hand for a few days. I was also tracking and chasing a guy who had borrowed an expensive item from me (and failed to return it )to make his trip south some months before. I was just getting settled in -- Camper plugged in and work arranged for the next day when i got a phone call from another friend back home on the location of the guy i was tracking. So I had to get on the road to catch this guy before he headed to sea again. I just had this gut feeling Catbuilder who was living out of a van was under big time stress. In talking with him I got the story he was away from home and family for long stretches working mostly alone on this monster of a build. I recall saying to my wife shortly after leaving -- I really feel bad having to go as he can really use the help but I really don't have a good feeling about the whole project. This has got to be really hard on him and his family --I just didn't have a good feeling and now it seems it's gone rough for them . Well I hope he pulls thru completes the build and thru some reflection they both find each other again as it seems from his posts they did have good times in their past chartering and had big plans for the future. I wish them the best.

 

Well, he is not the only forum owner who does that ....

Is it that forum owners have illnesses, or that illnesses lead to owning forums?

It is much easier in life to relax than it is to stay angry.

IMHO.

 

Well, no one will be threatened by this site. It's only asked that members please be polite to one another, and if someone feels a need to jab at or insult other members instead of discussing the idea or boat being discussed, that they choose one of the many other sites on the web instead.

Hopefully things will work out for catbuilder. However, at this point it would be best to continue this topic over on the http://www.multihulls4us.com/forums/showthread.php?t=5202 site where he is currently a member.