Boat Reviews and Tracking Down Designers
As we’re in the middle of writing a new boat review—this time on the Didi 23, I was reminded of this little explanation we wrote years ago about our boat review process. Speaking of which, if you own a small boat we’ve yet to review, are willing to take us for a sail, and are located withing striking distance of the West Coast—let us know.
Also, while you can find a small fraction of our boat reviews so far published here, subscribers can expect that most or all of our reviews will eventually be published here.—Josh
With each boat we review (well over a 100 now), we go through the same basic steps. First, we make sure to sail the boat ourselves. We’ve seen where other reputable publications and writers are happy to predict a vessel’s every characteristic based only on a photo or line drawing and some specifications, but we don’t think we’re smart enough to do that, so we make a point to actually crawl around on and sail the boats we review.
After our test sail we begin investigating, interviewing current and former owners of each particular design, as they often know important things that won’t be obvious to us our first-time aboard. When possible we also pore over user-group messages and forums to look for known problems, owner modifications, and any capsize or heavy weather stories we can find.
And finally we try to interview the designer or some principal at the company who manufactured the boat. Because so many of the boats we review are out of production, this often requires serious detective work. One time we managed to catch up with a designer who had seemingly fled the country and gone into hiding. He was initially hostile to our inquiries and suspicious of our motives, asking us repeatedly how we’d found him. Eventually he accepted we were simply very determined small-boat journalists.
And then there was the time we went looking for one company owner who must, we thought, still be alive, but who seemed to have completely vanished. We never did find him, but later learned from a reader who worked in the prison system that the company president we’d been searching for had been caught smuggling cocaine inside the keels of his trailersailers and was presently serving an extended sentence in a federal penitentiary. You just never know. •SCA•
And that’s why I only own centerboard boats: it makes crossing into Canada so much easier. They’d want to cut open the keel to check for cocaine otherwise. Little do they know I have American maple syrup in my kitchen kit.
I have not, nor will I ever smuggle cocaine in keels of boats or hide any contraban elsewhere in my boats or carry such things in luggage, etc.!!! I wanted to make that clear, just in case I ever get the chance to get out your way for a visit! Lol! AllthebestRoy