Like the US Government – we are OPEN FOR BUSINESS. Of course, you wouldn’t know it if you stopped by since I assume I will be here by myself again. In my research I found a relevant fact that I have mentioned before. Even though I don’t have anything of great interest to post, I do post most days — unlike the many inactive boatyard blogs out there: 1. Brown’s Boatyard – last update – Feb 15, 2013 2. Boatyard Services (Hinckley?)  – No date but only one post 3. Brooklyn Boatyard – last post – June 28, 2009 4. Great Island Boatyard – last update – April 29, 2013 5. Dickerson Boatyard – last updated – yesterday! Interesting Facts 1, We own the #1 spot in Google for “boatyard blog” (as well we should) 2. The most inactive sites show up on the first page (how odd, well except for us – we are #1) 3. Google claims about 497,000 results, my guess is no more than 1,000 are relevant although I don’t have the kind of time on my hands it would take to test this hypothesis. 4. This blog does not show up anywhere close to the front using “boating blog” although that would be correct since it has never been about boating per se, just about boat repair and maintenance. Not to toot my own horn, but if anyone else here was doing the blog it would probably go the way of the ones listed above. If nothing else I am a man of dependable habits. General Banter A customer brought to my attention that Grand Banks no longer has the GB Beacon which was the discussion board that GB owners had been frequenting for many years. In fact, I am the one who put the original board up many years ago and it was instantly popular. When we dropped our dealership they wrested the board from my cold dying fingers. I think they then figured out that users actually wanted input from them on the boats that they built in this forum. When we hosted the board I tried to help people with the problems or questions that they had  when needed– it’s not a real time guzzler to answer the off-question now and then, most of the people were actually helping each other. The customer who told me about this is trying to get us control of the board again and bring this beneficial resource back online. The information already in there would be invaluable even if the board was not being used actively. If we can pull this off I look forward to managing it again. This is the reason I started the blog here since I couldn’t find any thing like it at the time and it always pays off in Karma Points to help others out when possible — and I liked being a trend setter! Random Thoughts Why does the English language have so many superfluous letters in words? If everyone calls a wrench a rench, why have that w stuck on the front. Face it, “bring me that bfr” just flows better than “bring me that bfw“. We could drop all the extra unused letters and use them to make new words – like “google“. Update: I just realized much of the information in the GB Beacon forum can still  be viewed through (Mr. Peabody’s) Wayback Machine : http://web.archive.org/web/20131008023200/http://gbbeacon.com/phpBB2/. I’m not sure how deep it goes but it could be worth a try – and a good way to waste some time (if you are into that).