Slick, my wife explained that error message to me. It's saying that the problem is not with the IP Board software, but with Sailing Anarchy's servers. So not really "your end" but not the software either. BJ said that SA's hosting company is working on trying to figure it out.
Specifically, it's not SA's servers, but rather the Database server.
All the posts, user data, etc. are stored in a large relational database on MySQL, a type of relational database server. The board runs on a Web Server, those pages use a scripting language to make requests of the database, the database sends back the data to the web site that makes it pretty for your browser. These two servers can (and should, on a busy site) be located on two physically different pieces of server hardware.
So when you click the link on a thread, instead of it loading a web page of static text, the database returns all the content and the page is built on the fly.
What is happening is that the BBS Software is asking the SQL Database for things, and the SQL database is intermittently hurking up a hairball instead of returning the requested data.
The question is WHAT is making the SQL Database choke. It could be something as simple as too much demand on the database server, or a process or query that locks part of the database temporarily, blocking requests against it until the lock is released. Some system functions (e.g. re-building table indices to increase performance, some sort of backup utilities) can cause those sorts of locking on a whole table or large chunks of it. Also badly written database code can do it, but most modern SQL databases are smart enough to manage "deadlocks" and kill them even if developers are too sloppy too - and that shouldn't happen at the same time every day.
The largest trick here, since this is intermittent and not consistently reproduce-able, is to get the tech support propellerheads to actually witness the problem so they can take a look under the hood to see what else is running.
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I get an SQL error after using my log in once on a computer, sent a message from the f/p to Scot, he isn't seeing any issue on his end, and no one else is complaining, 
maybe someone else has an answer. If I could figure out how to clear it, it wouldn't be as much of an issue. I even tried downloading Chrome and Firefox, one time and down, some kind of supercookie. My wife's log in worked, until I switched to mine, then her computer wont load the forums any more, all I can see is the mythical Front page, I must be in some alternate universe where the front page exists and the forums don't. I'm using someone elses computer now, after I send this, I won't be able to see the forums any more on it. Weird.
