Bad boats

[Guest muttley]

Is there a bad boat on the market at the moment ? Every write up i read on every boat says that its great. Surely they cant all be top notch. Or is it that the people doing the reviews are getting paid to say what the manufacturer wants? If so then thats not fair on the paying public like you & me. Has anyone had any bad experiences?

[Norm B]

Is there a bad boat on the market at the moment ? Every write up i read on every boat says that its great. Surely they cant all be top notch. Or is it that the people doing the reviews are getting paid to say what the manufacturer wants? If so then thats not fair on the paying public like you & me. Has anyone had any bad experiences?

I doubt if there are any "bad boats" on the market these days but there are some "less than perfect" boats around. It's the same with anything, if you are going to spend £ thousands on advertising it helps if you have a good review and the advertiser will want to be assured of a good review before they commit themselves. The magazine will not want to lose their advertising revenue so a good review is guaranteed. It's not a good practise but it's understandable. At the SAN we offer the option of not printing a review if the customer doesn't like it. Again not a good practise but if we didn't offer this we wouldn't get anything to review because most customers know that a review in the SAN cannot be bought with advertising. Likewise we lose a lot of advertising revenue because potential advertisers don't want our review printed but at least when our readers read a review in the SAN it's as honest and as positive as we can make it without deceiving our readers. We have been accused of giving all our advertisers a good review but the fact is that we have done a lot of unfavourable reviews but don't have the adverts because of it.

[Steve Coppolo]

I think the funniest one I saw was in Boat fishing Monthly and was done by a certain Mr Stone. (Remember this one Cliff? ) It was for a little polyethylene raft with a chair stuck on top. Looked very, very dodgy to me.

[Norm B]

I think the funniest one I saw was in Boat fishing Monthly and was done by a certain Mr Stone. (Remember this one Cliff? ) It was for a little polyethylene raft with a chair stuck on top. Looked very, very dodgy to me.

Was it an April Fool, I remember seeing it but didn't bother to read it as it seemed to be a joke?

[Leon Roskilly]

With modern computer technology and modelling, a boat's design can be put through all kinds of conditions with a lot of confidence that it will perform exactly as specified in all of those conditions.

 

So, a 'bad' boat design, that only becomes apparent when it goes into production and is used by boaters should mostly be a thing of the past.

 

But as with most things, any design is a compromise between different optimums and you can't have everything in one design.

 

Price, speed, fuel efficiency, ride, handling (both in the water and manouvering on its trailer), behaviour in a range of sea conditions, space, and so many other factors all compete.

 

The trick is knowing enough to pick the right boat for you, depending on how and where you are going to use it.

 

Pick the wrong one for you and its likely to be a nightmare.

 

Whereas it could be the perfect boat for someone else.

[glennk]

Trouble is if you give a bad review they'll probably threaten to sue the magazine for damaging their business.

[Norm B]

Trouble is if you give a bad review they'll probably threaten to sue the magazine for damaging their business.

The truth is a good defence agains legal action but the truth does put off advertisers of dodgy gear.

[Guest CJS2]

I think the funniest one I saw was in Boat fishing Monthly and was done by a certain Mr Stone. (Remember this one Cliff? ) It was for a little polyethylene raft with a chair stuck on top. Looked very, very dodgy to me.

 

Yep, remember that OK, I did not want to do it, but was told to, it had been arranged.

. . . . OK the safest place was the marina, anywhere else and it was bath time!!! I conveyed the positive as best I could but at the end of the day it was nothing more than a plastic float with an unsecured stool perched on it! The importers were shown the text, their answer, "any publicity was good publicity, go ahead and print".

 

In retrospect I should have said 'no, no, no!' when I sore it, but every one was so enthusiastic, The best bit was the electric motor, even that did not have a secured battery! O'yes, and the fact that it was so strong it could bounce along the A14 at 60mph Glad to have moved on from that one!

 

Did any one notice?

Edited July 10, 2006 by CJS2

[Steve Coppolo]

O'yes, and the fact that it was so strong it could bounce along the A14 at 60mph

 

Oh my god, I'd forgotten about that!!

 

Edited July 10, 2006 by Steve Coppolo

[Toerag]

They do seem to review a lot of boats that are 'small boats you can fish from', not 'small fishing boats'. Anyone who has had boats for angling will know what I mean. There's also a fair lack of substance to the testing, and it is (rightly so) biased towards trailerable stuff. Anyone seriously thinking of buying a boat will want to know how it is built, how well it's built, and 'what it'll do' and it what sea conditions. It amuses me to read the 'top 10 angling boats' that they seem to do once a year and it doesn't include the MI21, Hellraiser, Aquafish, or DayAngler, which are streets ahead of anything else you'd think to fish from.