Is PBO now too narrow minded?

[Red Admiral]

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!!

Having bought my first PBO in, I think, 1974 (three day week time) I bought a subscription for many years. It was my faithful partner in many boating projects mostly now forgotten. When it became repetitive to the point of knowing what articles were about before reading them I gave up. Now subscribe only to Sailing Today largely because I am now based on East Coast and enjoy Colin Jarman's whimsical writings.

 

[bbdave]

As some one with very little money several years ago i and my father undertook a build project a Sou'wester 18 i couldn't afford to buy what we'd like to sail so this was our best option but i can honestly say none of the new techniques and methods we learned an used to fit out this hull were got from PBO which did seem strange considering the Practical tag.
I see all the fuel and engine changing articles which i see is usefull to motorboat owners the second hand yacht articles are beyond anything i can afford. In my experience even monied people try to save the groats probably even more so.

Now i have this boat lots of questions keep cropping up and i find the forum is the place i am finding some answers.

It's been finished 4 years i've still not bit the bullet and sailed her yet.

 

[Jim@sea]

I recently started buying BOAT MART, although the Mart bit seems to be getting smaller and it would not surprise me if they drop the Mart bit altogether.
I have been getting Practical Boat owner for many years and I must admit that sometimes it depresses me when forinstance in a few days Septembers issue will appear and I realise that summer has gone and I have done far too much reading of Boat Magazines and not enough "Doing"
Without offending people I think its a religious thing. People who work at PBO probably avert their eyes when confronted with a Bayliner or something which goes faster than nature intended, ie. displacement hull speed. The Magazines name is too ambiguous, Practical Boat Owner. It should really be *Practical Sailing Boat Owner"

 

[KAL]

Now i have this boat lots of questions keep cropping up and i find the forum is the place i am finding some answers.

It's been finished 4 years i've still not bit the bullet and sailed her yet.

what are you waiting for? Grab a mate or two and get out there! Settled weather at the mo. Go on, poke your nose out of the estuary and catch a few mackerel for supper!

 

[Lakesailor]

Perhaps you all missed my earlier post............

Money.

If PBO ran loads of articles about making VHF aerials from old coat hangers and patching inflatables with plastic milk cartons the advertisers would see it as fallow ground.

PBO would have to put up the cover price above the point the make-do-and-mend reader would pay.

There isn't any point in appealing to the bottom-end of the market as it doesn't have a pay-back.

Maybe it can be done as a web site, but getting enough Aradldite and seconhand supermarket trolley suppliers to advertise may be tricky, so the surfer would be subject to the server-fed advertising that we all love so much and probably pop-ups as well.

 

[Greenheart]

What Lakesailor says is true, unhappily...but...

...IF I were given the choice between paying the present cover price and rarely feeling satisfied with the content provided, or paying substantially more, and getting dozens of pages of low-budget maintenance advice, gear tests & project reports from real skippers aboard their boats, I'd willingly pay more. I wouldn't even mind if the mag was thinner each month, if the impractical elements were dispensed with.

At risk of sounding grumpily parochial, I'd prefer it if accounts of voyages, including all hazards and highlights en route, related mainly to UK waters. And to be honest, I'm not convinced that seriously hands-on boat-owners with slender budgets, are terribly interested in reports of chartering an average white boat, thousands of miles away.

Plenty of other mags do cover that 'hands-clean' end of the market; I generally find them dull, they're the reason I shifted from Yachting Monthly and began to look at PBO each month instead. If PBO's editorial staff want the mag to be less Practical, they'll be dropping what's left of its principle, original appeal.

 

[Quandary]

When I had a wee boat which I had fitted out from a bare hull I bought PBO, but once I started sailing it I used to buy Yachting World every month just to dream, later when it went in for 'superyachts' rather than performance cruiser racers I switched to 'Seahorse'.
When I started racing seriously, I bought Yachting Monthly to read about cruising, but more recently I again bought 'PBO'. I switched to it when they went off to Finland to review the Finngulf 33 and 37, a boat I lusted after. I know this went against the PBO tradition of galv. screws and iroko but it introduced me to the boat I now enjoy sailing so much so I owe them a debt. I used to enjoy the inventions and solving of problems in PBO too but there are only so many practical projects, their desperation was illustrated recently by a long, well illustrated article on soldering aluminium; though to be fair they did not hide what a bad idea it was.
Now I buy 'Yachting Life' it is parochial and some of the contributors write what I regard as rubbish but the area covered interests me and it manages to be cheaper with less advertising
Even magazines from the same stable have to compete, their success is measured by circulation/ advertising revenue so PBO just has to go the way it has, old duffers like me with an interest in diy, make do and mend and saving money are a rapidly dying breed so they would be writing their own obituary if they focused on us as their primary market.
I am really grateful for the forum though.

 

[late-night-lochin]

Rememnber British Leyland?

Even magazines from the same stable have to compete, their success is measured by circulation/ advertising revenue so PBO just has to go the way it has,

I can remenber some of the big motor conglomarates back in the 1970s such as British Leyland working on this principle. Ended in disaster if I remember rightly!

If they make PBO a YM Lite all that happens is that the "practical boat owners" do not renew their subscriptions so IPC lose sales and the YM readers then become spread across two separate magazines.

Makes about as much sense an the Triumph 2000 competing with the Rover 2000 (both totally different cars not like an Austin verses a Wolsley that just had a different grille and a walnut dash) or, Triumph developing a **** V8 engine for the Stag when Rover already had a perfectly good one!

Oh well, that's modern management for you!

 

[johnb2]

When I started to read PBO the highlight was Dick Everitt's practical tips. I have bought the full set and I'm pleased they are being slowly re-published. But what a shame that the booklets aren't all available (maybe a copyright problem). They have taught me so much about PRACTICAL Boat Owning over the years that they are among my most valued posessions. I can manage without reviews of brand new boats which are far beyond my means or even my dreams.

John B, Tir na nOg