Yachting magazine editors following YF...

I think they cater more to the weekend rec boater type with the occasional nod to the serious at which point they read Yacht Forums to get the real stuff.

I worked for a Californian boat builder who only chose to advertise in Sea, Motor Boat & Sailing and Yachting magazine.

Then had a guy from Power & Motoryacht call and he had no idea who we were because we did not advertise in their magazine, even though our dealers did. The guy was quite an arrogant individual who was pretty clueless about the boat building world.

My parents were on the original free subscription list!

I don't subscribe to any hard copy magazines. However, that doesn't mean I don't visit many other sites and find they all have their places. I do like the reviews and tests at both Power and Motoryacht and Boattest. I know the reviews are all going to be positive but still pick up excellent information from them. The reviews here are all positive as well but I still enjoy them.

I find many of the sites aimed at professionals very interesting as well and I find sites on the other end such at Trawler Forum to have a tremendous amount of useful cruising information.

I guess I think there is space for all and the more boating sites and publications the better for all. I've referred people here from other sites where I thought this site would benefit them and where with some I thought it was a better fit for them. When it comes to all the sites out there, if one doesn't like a site, just don't go there. As to competition, you never succeed or fail based on what your competitor does. You do so based on what you do.

Most boat tests I read are just fluff pieces, very little useful information to offer from a real data perspective. If I were doing it I would structure something more like the car magazines with real comparisons to the competition and a well devolved rating system. The performance data is presented in a mostly useless manner and barely rates magazine space. Unfortunately boat tests have become a function of advertising dollars, no impartial reviews allowed.

When I really need to know, I reach out to a small circle of trusted industry friends and captains that I can rely on.

And your competition would say the same. There is nothing to address about me saying your reviews are "positive."

I'll say this too, the others point out issues just as you did the vibration on sea trial. I've seen them point out they were unable to do one thing or another due to this or that problem.

Also, even on positive reviews, if you learn to read between the lines, you are able to pick up on those things the reviewer wasn't as happy about. Sometimes it's just personal preference items. However, other times it might be something such as a comment on ride that explains why as a high performance boat it's ride is less smooth.

I still learn some things from all reviews. The more detailed, the more I learn.

I disagree. I've found the test data to be very helpful and to be relatively accurate. We've found performance and fuel consumption data to follow the curves they publish in the reviews very closely. You mention comparative data, but we get that by just looking at other reviews.

YF Reviews:

When Carl suggests a yacht to be reviewed, we first discuss any negatives we know. If there are issues with either the yacht, the model, the builder, or their ethics, we will not do a review. So you have a built-in process of elimination with YF in that if you don't find a builder or model reviewed, give us a call to find out why. I have been onboard yachts and started working on a review, discovered too many negatives, and walked off.

My YF reviews:

I'm not sure how many pages/words are in a typical review but I believe it is something like 2,000 words. My YF reviews are maybe 6,000 words. A magazine can't have reviews that detailed because it uses up pages that could be advertisements which are revenue producing.

New yachts typically have a "media showing." A group of writers follow a "host" while s/he points out the highlights for maybe 30 minutes, an hour at most. If I cannot get at least an additional day onboard, I feel I don't have enough information for a review so we pass. My day onboard has to include access to the project manager, captain, engineer, chief stew, and/or owner. I try to get at least one overnight aboard. Using the heads, galley, hearing the noises all lead to more details and a more realistic review. For the yachts offering the media sea trial, I won't bother if it is not an ocean-going sea trial. A ride in the harbor or bay tells me very little. We have declined many reviews for this reason. I write the negatives. Frequently, I spell them out. Sometimes they are inferred. If I write something like the cutlery drawer is beneath the electrical panel in the companionway, you should be able to figure out that I am saying there is a shortage of drawers in the galley. This should particularly stand out since none of my reviews have the cliched descriptions like "luxurious settee is to starboard..."

My primary job is not as a writer. I have concluded approximately 200 yacht sales and have attended sea trial and survey on almost every one of them. That gives me experience and knowledge that I don't think most yacht reviewers have. Additionally, I have previously been a megayacht owner and I know that also gives me a unique perspective. When Carl first asked me if I was interested in writing reviews for YF, he didn't know that I had 2 college degrees in English including a minor in creative writing.

My background and credentials don't hold a smidgeon of credibility compared to Carl's. I am sure that other yacht reviewers have neither of our backgrounds. That's only part of what makes YF special. YF is the only forum on which I post or even bother to read. No other forums offer me reliable information that is relevant enough to sort through the banter.

I wish we had more yachts that meet our criteria. I love writing the reviews and I hope that my love of quality yachts comes through in my reviews.

Judy

As I Naval Architect I can zero in on the b.s. or the useful data pretty quick. Reading between the data lines is something the average boater is not doing, because he is unaware what to look for or how to compare boats beyond speed/fuel consumption. I have also supplied the hard data for many boat tests that get reproduced in a magazine, and observe the writer try to weave in some correlation even though he may not have tested it as I did while collecting the accurate data. There is so much more than speed and fuel, especially in developing a comparative analysis. Consider rpm bandwith, transport efficiency, useful power range and speeds/fuel at more rpm than they are willing to publish. The "cruise" speeds are usually highlighted based on mpg but are really miss-represented and you have to chart the data to get better pictures. A usually case on pod driven boats is that the data will not highlight what I call the 'switchpoint" where the boat falls off or on plane or has an excessive amount of running trim. That is just one of the parameters you want to keep in mind when comparing different boats.

Now, I will tell you that I have a huge interest in boat magazines of all types, I probably have a collection of over 200 boxes going back to the late 60's as reference material. I can assure you that Yachting had much better and much more technical boat tests and engineering articles in the 70s than we ever see today. They have dumbed down the content for their target audience, maybe? Kind of hard to accept in this information/data driven age.

Judy, I wish you wrote more reviews and yours are the most thorough, complete reviews I am aware of.

Pacblue. Back in olden days according to some everything was better I guess. I can't speak to the engineering articles in the 70's since I wasn't born until 1970. I'm not talking about cruise speeds. Both sites I mentioned regularly publish reviews with full performance charts through the entire RPM range. They also post time to reach speeds and publish the test conditions. They even indicate the equipment used for the tests.

I don't know what the average boater reads or even who is average, nor do you. I do know I read between the lines and I think Judy's example given was excellent as she mentioned inferred negatives. Also, the reviews I mentioned are conducted on separate days and do mention the details of the circumstances in the reviews and are not part of media groups aboard.

I believe the reviews on YF are excellent, just too few. I, however, also do believe there are other well done reviews from which I gather good, useful, information. No one site gets even a modest percentage of all boats which could be reviewed. It's not like cars where every car produced is reviewed and data collected. Also, the majority of boat buyers in the universe are not buyers of the type boats reviewed here or of just those type boats and many of us own various different boats.

In a quick review of both those boat test sites, they do not always include measured times to plane, to 30 mph, etc. There is no such thing as a "Full Performance Chart" because each one has their idea of "Full", which usually doesn't include running trim, time to reach each speed (not just one or two points), accelerations (g-forces), etc. So there is no need to represent them this way. It just goes along with the inconsistent approach I have noted.

I am not nostalgic for the old days but rather am pointing out the lack of evolution on the magazine boat test approaches over time. The car magazine tests have evolved, but the boat mags have not, plain and simple. There is a wide open opportunity to come out with a new approach, as there are easy to operate modern data collection devices that can create a better picture than what is provided today which is more useful to the consumer.