History of Boatpokers

In 1994 if you ran “marine surveyor” through a search engine, you would get about 12 hits.  It was then that Tom Benton, Jim Wood, Peggy Feakes and Jack Mackinnon started throwing “stuff” about marine surveying back and forth over email to each other.

Jim Wood actually figured out that he could set up a “group” list and send “stuff” to everyone at once.  As more and more marine surveyors were found to have email addresses, the list grew and grew.  To keep the list accurate, Peggy Feakes was anointed “Keeper of The E’s” which soon became simply the “E-Lady”.  This soon outgrew the reality of just having a “group” email list because the header of (To:) was getting much longer than any of the content postings.  Peggy enlisted the help of John Peeples who had the know how to set up a “Reflector” very similar to what we have now.  It was named the SAMSLIST, and all you had to do to belong was be a member in good standing with SAMS.

The list continued to grow, and it was determined that the list did not belong to SAMS, but to the “Group”.  SAMS did not control the list, and to avoid any misconceptions that it was an official function of SAMS, it was determined that the name should be changed.

Operation of the “List” was also growing into quite a chore, and it was decided that we needed someone who could do a good job of maintaining the list and operating the reflector for us.  That was when Don Robertson was enlisted to be the “Listmaster”.  The end result was the birth of “Boatpokers”.  It has grown well beyond what any of us ever thought it would in the beginning.  It has become a great place for marine surveyors to bounce ideas and questions around to a rather large group of their peers.

Please Enjoy Boatpokers, and remember to never be afraid to “Go Where No Man Has Gone Before”.  In the beginning, we had no idea how informative and how much fun this venue could be.