MBY - Curate's Egg

[benjenbav]

Latest edition seemed good in parts but with a few weird bits.

My physics may be stuck in Newtonian misconceptions but I didn't think rotating bodies tended to fall towards the centre of the circle of rotation without an extrinsic force being applied to them. Pondering this thought rather diminished my enjoyment of the stabiliser article, together with the various references to "our" Princess 56 - which was possibly a wistful recollection of the days when the manufacturers would spring for a freebie boat for the mags to do long term tests/have parties.

I thought Hugo might be wise to watch out for Hurricane after it gets dark having captioned a picture of the prestigious Ancam as a "DIY" camera (nailed onto the side of the boat...)

And, for me, the article on the RYS types bimbling round the coast was spoilt by the fact that the rough water shots were so obviously "posed", being taken with the boat running in circles in Hurst Narrows which made it all look a bit artificial.

 

[benjenbav]

And did Birchwood ever really offer a TS57 with 2 x 2000hp? I am not entirely sure whether this was a misprint as it stated "2,000 aside" and, aside from that, it seemed a bit of a leap from the stock 2 x 800 offered on the example in the mag.

I would guess that a 4,000hp Birchwood from 1990 would be equally likely to fly or sink and, by now, would make a nice river cruiser. I could well imagine giving it the beans out of Teddington Lock...

 

[Nick_H]

You may find the answer in the ad for the new editor, or was it assistant editor - "boating experience not essential"

 

[JT57]

Great free advert for Paragon, they must be delighted. Or did they sponsor the trip? Lost me when I saw the photo where she's heading back towards the Needles.

 

[KINGFISHER 9]

You lot are lucky ... I haven't had mine delivered yet!

 

[JT57]

You lot are lucky ... I haven't had mine delivered yet!

Didn't have to chase mine this month, which makes a pleasant change. Last month when I rang to tell them it hadn't arrived, they agreed to send me another one and yes, you've guessed......................two turned up on the same day (though not until 19 May).

 

[Montemar]

My experience of journos is they can be editing a hifi magazine then get a new job editing a car magazine. All you need is the ability to sound off on the obvious.

 

[jimmy_the_builder]

Didn't have to chase mine this month, which makes a pleasant change. Last month when I rang to tell them it hadn't arrived, they agreed to send me another one and yes, you've guessed......................two turned up on the same day (though not until 19 May).

Magazines Direct who administer the subscriptions couldn't administer their way out of a wet paper bag. I've been trying since the end of March to organise an extension to my subscription and despite loads of phone calls and emails they just cannot sort it out. I like reading the magazine but at this rate I'm just going to give up when my current sub expires. It shouldn't be this difficult to just organise a subscription extension. Grrr!

 

[prv]

Magazines Direct who administer the subscriptions couldn't administer their way out of a wet paper bag. I've been trying since the end of March to organise an extension to my subscription and despite loads of phone calls and emails they just cannot sort it out. I like reading the magazine but at this rate I'm just going to give up when my current sub expires. It shouldn't be this difficult to just organise a subscription extension. Grrr!

I've had the opposite problem - I got fed up with the repetitive noddy stuff in PBO, but had a lot of trouble getting the subscription cancelled. After a couple of months when I thought it was finally done, a copy arrived out of the blue - I just hope this doesn't mean they've resurrected the sub and started billing me again...

Pete

 

[Time Out]

Magazines Direct who administer the subscriptions couldn't administer their way out of a wet paper bag. I've been trying since the end of March to organise an extension to my subscription and despite loads of phone calls and emails they just cannot sort it out. I like reading the magazine but at this rate I'm just going to give up when my current sub expires. It shouldn't be this difficult to just organise a subscription extension. Grrr!

Experience has shown me the best way of dealing with this is just to wait until yours runs out....

 

[wellf100]

Didn't have to chase mine this month, which makes a pleasant change. Last month when I rang to tell them it hadn't arrived, they agreed to send me another one and yes, you've guessed......................two turned up on the same day (though not until 19 May).

for 3 months running mine was over 2 weeks late. They were perfectly nice on the phone but just didn't seem to have a clue why they've been late. Was on time this month though.

 

[rafiki_]

My experience of journos is they can be editing a hifi magazine then get a new job editing a car magazine. All you need is the ability to sound off on the obvious.

My experience is with motor mag journo's, and all the ones I have met are extremely knowledgeable. Mostly they stay with auto's although might move to a different mag. Hugo is an exception, who moved from the auto side to MBY.

 

[jfm]

Hi BJB. Yup, I agree. The dragster Birchwood was funny, and the Paragon trip Cowes-Ardfern was indeed let down by the absence of relevant pictures and some oddities in the story generally (like, how come "my skipper" arrived in a car?). No worries though.

Ancam article was nice of course. Yep Hurricane's skills in that regard are a bit more than typical DIY!

On stabilisers, overall I thought that was the best in MBY's several articles on this topic, in that it got a lot of the technicalities right and also it got a lot of the relevant issues when comparing gyros vs fins right. As ever, a bit sloppy (gyros don't produce energy but DM rarely gets the physics correct, and no worries). It was not at all forward looking in terms of what is under development in the minds and factories of stabiliser manufacturers, but maybe that wasn't the plan. Some column inches were wasted on waffle, and a really comprehensive article would measure noise properly, provide costs, weights, service intervals, and so on. All those items vary by boat but there is still relevant baseline data that could be provided.

I just scanned the article again to find the bit that prompted you to make your Newtonian physics comment. I couldn't find it for sure, and I guess you are referring to the bit about planning mobos leaning into a turn. I thought that what DM wrote there was ok - there is an extrinsic force causing an stabilised boat to roll into the turn, being the athwartships component of the lift from the water flow over the rudders, or the same component of the propeller thrust in an outboard or outdrive boat. Absent any software trickery, fin stabs (not gyro) will keep the boat flat, which feels weird. Sleipner's software (and maybe that of others) allows you to program the degree of heel you want and like. Mine is set to lean the boat in a bit, which feels natural, but not as much as it would lean if unstabilised. Its all a matter of user choice. Obviously a gyro can't do any of this turn lean management and I hope they have an athwartships accelerometer to tell the computer that the boat is in a turn and the gyro should stay out of things.

DM said you can only compare flat and curved fins if you have the dream scenario of two identical boats side by side. He is right as regards stabilisation effect, but we have data as regards fuel economy. My boat has run with both sets of fins, possibly the only boat on the planet to do that other than sleipner's test boat, and I get fuel savings from the curved fins at 20 knots of about 0.7 litres/mile, read from the Garmin computer that divides fuel burn from the caterpillar ECU by SOG from the GPS (in non tidal waters). That is ~4% so not life changing but worth having.

I possibly get better results than the princess 56 pictured in the article. The P56 has a flatter V, so its fins are more vertical than mine. My hull has deeper V, see pic below, and with a 1m sq fin lying as flat as mine at say 23 knots there is significant lift, as you can surmise just by looking at the pic below

 

[jfm]

Hugo is an exception, who moved from the auto side to MBY.

Not sure but wasn't Hugo in caravans? :nonchalance:
I think overall the mag is in good shape under Hugo's editorship. It's an entertaining read, even if you can take issue with odd things here and there, and the pictures are good. Reader contributions are of course generally excellent (haha :encouragement. Sometimes I think the boat tests get it right by calling out bad design; other times I think they get it wrong. One thing you do get to realise after many years as a boat buyer and user is that boat builders absolutely do not know everything about how to design, spec and build a boat, and they cut corners to save cost, so it ought not to be surprising if boats tests were to point out drawbacks in new boats very often.

 

[MapisM]

pic below

Not sure to see well, did they remove winglets from curved fins? And if yes, why?
The 4% better MPG sounds amazing.
Did you have a chance to compare also the bare hull results, or just straight vs. curved fins?

 

[benjenbav]

Not sure but wasn't Hugo in caravans? :nonchalance:
I think overall the mag is in good shape under Hugo's editorship. It's an entertaining read, even if you can take issue with odd things here and there, and the pictures are good. Reader contributions are of course generally excellent (haha :encouragement. Sometimes I think the boat tests get it right by calling out bad design; other times I think they get it wrong. One thing you do get to realise after many years as a boat buyer and user is that boat builders absolutely do not know everything about how to design, spec and build a boat, and they cut corners to save cost, so it ought not to be surprising if boats tests were to point out drawbacks in new boats very often.

I saw a piece in an auto mag a few months ago about Hugo having been an ace car journo back in the day. Maybe he hitched his caravan later?

FWIW my Newtonian physics comment was pushed by a sentence something like: "your body - or more important your G&T - won't fall into the middle of a circle when turning or for that matter be pushed outwards". Falling rather than being pushed being the unfortunate choice of word which provoked me...

 

[Croftie]

Magazines Direct who administer the subscriptions couldn't administer their way out of a wet paper bag. I've been trying since the end of March to organise an extension to my subscription and despite loads of phone calls and emails they just cannot sort it out. I like reading the magazine but at this rate I'm just going to give up when my current sub expires. It shouldn't be this difficult to just organise a subscription extension. Grrr!

They renewed my sub in April then kindly "stole" the money again in May. It took 4-5 emails from me and nearly a month of inactivity on their part to get it sorted, infact it was only done after I threatened social media. Subs and DD now cancelled.

 

[CLB]

Hugo was at auto car before going to MBM and later, MBY. I think it was one of the other MBM editors that came from caravans.

 

[Time Out]

Hugo was at auto car before going to MBM and later, MBY. I think it was one of the other MBM editors that came from caravans.

Indeed, it was Simon Collis who was ex Caravan who joined MBM, then Hugo, then Carl then Rob.

Hugo is still with MBY, Carl has moved onto play with the big big boat boys wearing a red hat, Rob is with Classic Boat and Simon can still be seen lurking around putting words on paper.

 

[rafiki_]

Not sure but wasn't Hugo in caravans? :nonchalance:

Nah, Hugo was one of Steve Cropley's protégée's at The Autocar.