My reference to "Hot Boat "-

Hot Boat is like two dry fingers in the butt , a little uncomfortable at first but you'll get used to it .

-beerjet-

Spoken with the wisdom and knowledge that only you have! 

i read a rumor that they are going to make hotboat a subcriber only site....meaning you gotta have a subscription to their worthless mag to read the forum.

someone posted this email from the staff at hotboat.com

The website came down to be redesigned and should be back up by the first of the year, hopefully. The deal with charging people is, subscribers to the magazine can post on a moderated forum for free. If they want to post to the non-moderated forum it will cost them $9.95 a year. People who are not subscribers will have to pay $49.95 a year to subscribe to it. Let me know if you have any other questions.

Now I want to make this clear so everyone here....

I will NEVER charge you guys to be a part of this site. NEVER!

that shit right there just made me mad. 

Just about everyone I've met through boating came from HB. Great place with great peeps . For me , as time wore on it became more and more unbearable with dama . I used to buck up and sift through all the shit to find the nuggets of tech gold . An infinite amount of knowledge over there and I can only hope for the benefit of all of us jet , v-drive , half whacks , and yes even the whacker owners , some of that knowledge finds it's way over here .

-beerjet-

So let me get this straight , I can pay $49.95 to join the site for a year or I can sucscribe to their mag for $24 a year? Is this just some stunt to raise the number of subscribers to their mag?

This actually makes me want to UN-subscribe!

You better believe it . How many of those people that bullshited all day on there do you think actually subscribed .

-beerjet-

Well ... the part that really sucks is all of the history, advice, tech info, etc. that was posted up over there.

I hope it will be retained in some manner or another. It was nice to use it for reference for new boaters.

Thanks Brad for having us.

Brian

Well ... the part that really sucks is all of the history, advice, tech info, etc. that was posted up over there.

I hope it will be retained in some manner or another. It was nice to use it for reference for new boaters.

Thanks Brad for having us.

Brian

Brian,

I agree with you...there was several years of archived info there...that everyone contributed to...now they are going to try to sell it back to everyone. thats what frustrates me.

Brian, btw...welcome to the site  Glad to have you here.

-Brad

TALK ABOUT HITTIN THE NAIL ON THE HEAD! AMEN!

Thanks Brad  for the site. BTW I just got my Jan 08 issue of HB and on the cover they are braggin about  there "new look". Yikes. apparently for $114,900 you to can own a x-flite that does 59.9 mph. wooooow

Hot boat tried to charge everyone a few years back to be a member if you already hadn't signed up before a certain date. As you can imagine that didn't go over too well, and it won't work now either. No one in their right mind would pay to talk in a forum when there are so many others, better ones to boot, to do so...like here, laidback and banderdog.

And their magazine has sucked for almost 20 years maybe more. Davidson use to come into the shop to hand out the annual awards, that's a joke in itself, and we use to bitch to him back then. He didn't care, they just want the ads placed...period. Nothing else matters, if their subscriptions would go up featuring stories on nothing but Bayliners, that's what the articles would be on. You can't blame them, as the market changes so do they, Powerboat jumped ship long ago annd went where the money is, and hot boat is just about there. fuk 'em.

I spent a lot of time last nite reading posts on what was left of the HB site and again this AM (going in the "backdoor links")  before they completely shut things down.
Without sounding melodramatic, I have to say it reminded me of walking thru the rubble of a bombed out city or the aftermath of a some huge natural disaster.  People (the HB community) had genuine emotions of shock, dismay, confusion and anger.
To lots of folks HB was a very important part of their daily social lives.  HB forums was to me at times like an Old Frontier town with no real Sheriff or "managerial" direction. It was to some degree "out of control", but with a limited amount of effort, I believe it could have been "fixed" or saved, and actually made better.
There was an amazing amount of good done too, and lots of good interaction, discusion and information. 
Unfortunately the "new HB powers that be" made a decision to "Blitz", tear down and level the entire site.
I must respect their right and privilege to do this, after all it's their site.  But as an experienced business person, I truly believe the method, lack of warnings and follow thru was, IMO ,not well thought out .  I suspect they (new HB management) may never know or completely comprehend the long term ramifications of what they have done and It may be that at some corporate number crunching level they really don't care ?  Just my contribution to this discussion.
GO SOCALJETBOATS!! 
Tom

well said

This very topic came up quite a bit . How many advertisers do you guys think would sink money into a magazine like this month after month considering how many "jet boaters" as a whole buy brand new products from said advertisers . Everything we buy is either bought at the swapmeets or here and there in spam sections , or word of mouth . Fact of the matter is "we" dont buy enough brand new shit to have advertisers interested in what we are interested in . "We" need to change the market . The newest , biggest , most colorful gayliners are what funds the industry ...... unfortunatly .-beerjet-

You are exactly right.

Bottom line is most magazines are struggling, not counting the crazy gossip ones. My next door neighbor is a pretty well know film critic, as well know as a film critic can be I guess, and he's worried he'll be out of a job in the print business within 5 years. The net's changed everything. Same here, this site and the others, are gonna bury the mags as we we know them.

Alot of the drama that went on over there where the @ss clowns in the Sandbar. JustJets always maintained a great atmosphere, and the wealth of knowledge and helpfulness got me thru some tough issues with my boat.

It will be missed, but now we have our own Site

Chris