Is PBO now too narrow minded?

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Coaster

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I've bought and read PBO many times over the past 25 years or so. One of its strengths was the coverage of all types of boats that the average person might aspire to own - kayaks, windsurfers, RIBs, day fishing boats, cruising and racing sailing boats, motor cruisers, sportsboats and more.

The magazine now seems to be only interested in sailing boats. To quote Sarah Norbury in the Summer 2011 edition "...we're sailors, yet our trickiest and most expensive problems seem to be with our engines...", which I take to mean that if your boat doesn't have sails you shouldn't be reading this publication.

There is already a good magazine covering the mid-range of sailing boats. It's called Yachting Monthly. Am I alone in regretting the move of PBO to becoming YM-lite?
 
Coaster said:
I've bought and read PBO many times over the past 25 years or so. One of its strengths was the coverage of all types of boats that the average person might aspire to own - kayaks, windsurfers, RIBs, day fishing boats, cruising and racing sailing boats, motor cruisers, sportsboats and more.

The magazine now seems to be only interested in sailing boats. To quote Sarah Norbury in the Summer 2011 edition "...we're sailors, yet our trickiest and most expensive problems seem to be with our engines...", which I take to mean that if your boat doesn't have sails you shouldn't be reading this publication.

There is already a good magazine covering the mid-range of sailing boats. It's called Yachting Monthly. Am I alone in regretting the move of PBO to becoming YM-lite?
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Funny you should mention this.

I subscribed for two or three years and used to really enjoy seeing the new monthly magazine in the post box. Used to be a bit too Saily for me, but from time to time there was something on a Motorboat....Then, they seemed to dry up and it seemed to be more and more rag and stick.

Didn't bother renewing for that reason, I can live with it being biased towards sail boats, but it got a bit too much for me.
 
My main gripe is that there is too much focus on expensive boats way above what I could ever afford but I do recognize that there will be people irritated with money saving articles for budget boaters involving what is to them only small change!
 
To be fair, any magazine can only publish what they can get as copy. They did make quite an effort a few years back to cover mobos and other types, but it seems to have died off somewhat. Whenever I get a train home from London (not a favourite) I buy one of the other mags and so far I haven't found anything better.

The same applies to subjects becoming repetitive, seasonal tips don't really change year to year do they? The various series on older boats in differing size ranges has helped a bit, but marred by the fact that half the copy is Peter Poland going on about Hunters (which don't always fit the category of the article).

Of course with new boat reviews you're rather stuck with the AWB or expensive niche market boats, all of which seem to be owned by people who are distinctly not practical. i found it irritating that one article (several pages) about a chainplate fracturing a partial bulkhead ended with the practical solution being to leave it in the yard for a professional repair. I like to see photos of a job being done. When I repaired my Rutland 503, I was pleased to have the photos and comments from David Rainsbury's article to supplement the instructions from the manufacturer.

Rob.
 
Didn't PBO buy up and incorporate a motor boat magazine a few years back, Motor Boating Monthly or some such? That would explain the increase of Mobo articles at the time, which are interesting even to the likes of me; I'd rather read about how to seal your patio doors against the wind than getting your DSC GPS MOB to talk to your Seatalk. :D
 
catalac08 said:
My main gripe is that there is too much focus on expensive boats way above what I could ever afford but I do recognize that there will be people irritated with money saving articles for budget boaters involving what is to them only small change!
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Agreed wholeheartedly!

Thinking back to when Denny Desoutter was editor of PBO, the emphasis was on being a PRACTICAL BOAT OWNER. With the greatest of respect to Sarah Norbury, she is allowing the magazine to drift towards Yachting Monthly territory. The word Practical could almost be dropped from the title as there is so little of relevance to the people the magazine was originally aimed at.

I stopped buying PBO about 3 years ago, and have no intention of resubscribing whilst it continues in it's current vein...not that it will make much difference in the grand scheme of things!!
 
Bower15 said:
+1
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+2

As a sailor on a very tight budget I buy PBO for information on second hand boat classes (not a cat in hells chance that any boat I own will have cost over £5K), and tips for saving money on repairs/upgrades and fixes.... as a confirmed sailing man I have little interest in motor boats..... if the magazine had featured 50:50 motor boats and yachts in the first few copies I bought, then I wouldn't have bothered subscribing....
 
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In the old days ('eighties, as far as I'm concerned), there was only one mag that suited me...Yachting Monthly. It was practical enough, sufficiently relevant to new yachts and coastal and inland news, and didn't seem blind to any aspect of boating.

What happened?!! :eek:

About the time Yachting Monthly lost the heavy marbled-paper cover, it also seemed to dispense with the very readable, slightly old-fashioned, always entertaining and useful style of content.

A bit like the TV series, Poirot...the early episodes (twenty years back) were fun. Then, early this century, the makers decided to make the incidental cast young and 'sexy' (doubtfully, in my view, but the intention was obvious), and the charm and humour of the early ones was largely gone.

Yachting Monthly likewise tried to become 'slick'. It jettisoned almost all of its appeal almost at once, and switched to the sort of image that up-market furniture manufacturers use in their brochures. I immediately switched to Practical Boat Owner, and I'm not surprised PBO's forum is the most popular now.

Considering how many issues are common to sail and power boaters, an 'umbrella' publication must be possible. This thread might benefit PBO, if, as a result the editor steers a little more towards matters of navigation, ColRegs, anchors and bilge pumps. She may safely leave the sunny photos of new 6-figure price-tag boats, to their builders' PR divisions.
 
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More text, less photos, more sketches, more projects, some serious reader renovation projects would be good. More wood, more GRP, more practical stuff like anchoring, reefing (yes its been done before, but I dont have the booklets). A practical navigation series would be good.
 
The short answer to the orignal question is a resounding "YES!" I"ve a box full of old copies full of useful DIY tips, ideas and helpful hints for the impecunious boat owner. I've not kept a copy this century and stopped my subscription around 2004 (although I do still buy the occasional copy and that of YM). Personally I think it's lost its way, although it may resonate better with a younger generation of boaty who thinks nothing of shelling out shedloads of folding for his or her pleasure.
 
Amen to OldBoots and Topcat.

I know it makes me sound about seventy-five, but demographically, that must be a huge chunk of the readership.

Dare I say? The magazine articles in Miss Norbury's time, remind me of TV adverts that make men irritated and women insecure.

Stop trying to be 'cool'. There are much flashier boat mags for that. If you're discussing practical boat owning, ditch fashion and family, and stick to varnish and outboards and anchor-weights and tarpaulins. We actually like that stuff!
 
Yep, I also think its lost its "Practical" ways.

There are lots of folk out there screaming out for some nice diy tips/fixes and projects they can be making/doing to improve their boats whilst saving money.

I for one enjoy working on my boat and making things for it as much as sailing. The sailing is simply a nice by-product!
 
I've just been wading through some old back numbers (from the 1980s mostly) of Classic Boat with a few PBOs thrown in. It's not just PBO . Both PBO and Classic Boat catered for people who wanted to do things themselves - but the majority of the boats they talked about were wooden. PBO is now, as somebody already wrote, YM Lite, and CB is "gosh here's another incredibly expensive replica that looks like a Fifer but has a wing keel" (and has been since the late 90s).

Presumably market research has shown that people want mags with lots of pictures of expensive boats and don't actually want to get their hands dirty - oh, unless it's cooking a tortilla so that the contents fall out when you try to eat it. To be fair there are some practical articles like how to use spinnakers and advice on navigation, as well as the short section on readers' practical projects, but it is difficult to avoid repeating things over a cycle of a few years.

A pity - the old back issues of PBO are a delight to read - people building small cruisers down the side of the garage with a polythene lean-to for shelter.

My subscription has a few months to run, but after that I'll spend the money on a few shackles.
 
Damned right, Andy.

I wonder if PBO's editorial team will read our remarks, put us down as terribly old-school, determinedly dissatisfied, fondly retrospective types whose interests don't justify the magazine living up to its name? :mad:

Wouldn't it be good, if in the next six months, PBO features in-depth articles and tests or reviews about galvanism, jury-rigging broken hatches and pumps, correcting weather/lee helm, sculling, compass-balancing, budget desalinators, kedging-off, bringing the shine back to 40 year-old GRP, and readers' answers to all-time favourite designs.

Or, maybe that stuff is easily covered by this forum, leaving nothing for the magazine, except...glossy pics of 2.4-kid families, fresh from the shave-foam/iPad commercials, grinning improbably as their latest thirty foot very-average-white-boat leaps alarmingly over the wake from the photographer's RIB.

I don't even know, whether PBO's readership is presently declining. But if it is, it could be because it's not very practical. I always used to buy, then read at home, and I don't ever remember wishing I hadn't. Now, I like to flick through before buying, and I routinely leave it on the shelf. Very sad.
 
dancrane said:
maybe that stuff is easily covered by this forum, leaving nothing for the magazine
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That's certainly true. I was about to reply to your mention of compass-swinging to say that I'd be interested in an article on that - then I realised that actually I'd rather ask and receive advice here (as I surely would) than read the superficial two-page treatment that would show up in the magazine and tell me nothing I couldn't find via Google.

dancrane said:
I like to flick through before buying, and I routinely leave it on the shelf. Very sad.
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I still have a subscription, and I still get a burst of happy anticipation when I find it in my pigeonhole. I turn to the "Practical Projects" and "Boatowner's Sketchbook" and read those, then I thumb through the rest of the magazine, find little of more than passing interest, and put it down feeling disappointed. Don't know why I bother really.

Pete
 
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I've got to agree that PBO does seem to have foresaken the MoBo owners, and to be honest I think that is a bit sad. I know that there will always be rivalry between those who sail and those who motor, but it's a pretty grey dividing line considering that most maneouvering is done under engine now.
Also got to agree that they don't seem to cater for the bottom of the market very much, probably due to advertising pressure - they want us to buy a new thingummyjig, not be told how to repair or do without the old one.
However I still buy PBO, Yachting Monthly, and Sailing Today simply because they help keep my dreams alive while I'm stuck out here!
 
As a hard up owner of an old,cheap boat (mobo in my case), I would relish the prospect of being able to buy a magazine full of articles giving ideas on how to keep it neat, tidy and running for very little outlay but the vogue in all the magazines at the moment seems to be one of 'buy the latest blah blah, or take it to a 'professional'.
On the whole, most of the people that I come across that own boats are fairly practical people capable of most small repairs and I get a bit fed up with being treated as a 'retail sheep' that can only buy solutions to problems.
On the other hand, maybe I'm just jealous because I can't afford to pay for new bits or to get other people to do stuff.
 
Someone started a magazine over here called "DIY". I've looked at a few, but never bought one, 'cuz I'd been saving all sorts of useful articles since we started boating before they invented moveable type.

Yes, the "how to" articles are extremely useful, but I don't see many in the slick magazines. We stopped buying SAIL magazine because of that. I don't enjoy "Cruising World" anymore either, except for Fatty Goodlander, and I can read his columns online a few months later than in print.

We keep up on "Good Old Boat" which is always full of DIY articles, written by real sailors with real boats.

The ability to find useful material via the internet is rapidly expanding, and the contributions from folks on boards like these make the magazines almost inherently out of step given the content they now provide.

Disclaimer: I do NOT own an iPhone or iPad, and my only cell phone is so old it's a rotary dial!:)

Since so many written publications, magazine, newspapers, etc.) have ditched their regular contributors in favor of cheaper submitted-by-non-known-author material, ya'd think they could keep up with the DIY. Doesn't seem to be the case.

There is also the boat-specific nature of our websites, which cater much more to the specific issues on each boat (i.e., the specific engine type not generics, where "hidden" stuff, like shutoff valves, are located, etc.) than any magazine can't deal with. Those are the question we see on our own forums. For example, there was an engine bleeding article in one of the mags that said you need to bleed your injectors. NOT on OUR engines, ya don't. Wrong "generic" information is not very helpful.
 
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