Going on past experience I think it is fruitless to think he will salvage the site or even hand over the keys. At least we have a good reliable setup here.
As someone who's been on the provider side of hosting; sometimes there are extra complications that aren't immediately apparent that can cause someone to hessitate about sharing the data. In the DB with all the posts are PMs and other bits that the original posters might not want some 3rd party having and a pile of other complications. No idea if that's the case with AA, but just pointing out that sometimes there are extra circumstances which aren't readily apparent that can complicate matters. Allowing for a site to live past it's creators isn't something that happens without effort. There is a lot of planning and work to ensure others have not just access, but legal power to make updates and changes at the registrar, renewing certificates, etc. Good hosting and moderation are easy to overlook as when things are working smoothly you don't see them, thanks David.
I harp on this a bit, but in every piece of forum software I've delat with when you delete a PM, it's still there. The software just flags it as "deleted" so it doesn't show.
It looks very much like the forum has gone forever which is a real shame. If by chance it does reappear it would be a very good idea to capture a copy of the forum contents using something like Httrack. https://www.httrack.com/
