Nominations for the worst designed bits of boat gear

I'd like to nominate the manufacturer of the "lifesaving" equipment we found in a cockpit locker when we bought our second boat. It was a strange sort of "capsule". Neither me nor my mate knew what it was, so we chucked it on to the lawn with the other stuff from the locker we were emptying. A few seconds later, we became a ware of a slight hissing noise and peered over the side of the coaming. The "capsule" had split and some sort of amorphous plastic "blob" was slowly being inflated.

Now when I say "slowly", we watched it for a few minutes and returned to our work of emptying the cockpit locker. About 5 minutes later, we peered out again and noticed it had turned itself into a (sort of) lopsided horseshoe buoy. It was still hissing and growing...slowly...

Once more, we returned to our labours and about 5 minutes or so after that, there was a "pop" from the lawn. We looked in that direction and noticed that it had burst...and the hissing had stopped.
 
Avocet,

I had what sounds like the same thing, in the early 80's; a sort of grenade which when thrown to a MOB was supposed to inflate into a lifering.

The thing had been very wet on some rough sails, and we decided we didn't trust it.

Also, to be honest we were itching with curiousity to try it.

With an appreciative audience I dropped the thing over the side; it went down like a rock...
 
Marine diesels. Every one I have ever seen has been a bodged together nightmare of oil, water and fuel pipework: impossible to keep clean and waiting to corrode. A proper design would have almost everything done with internal passageways.

As a example of what can be done, the Williams FJ-44 bizjet engine has far fewer parts than its competitors, because much of the plumbing is done by passageways in the casing. It may not be a coincidence that the designer, Sam Williams, was blind. Better 3D thinking?
 
dylanwinter said:
My nominations are

.... morse controls

who the heck thought those up?

the glue they use to stick headlinings on with.

non waterproof tiller pilots
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In defence of the gluemakers, in my experience it is the foam backing that perishes, levaing a boundary layer of foam still stuck to the glue.

My personal vote goes to the Upper Cutlass bearing arrangement on the Fairline Turbo 36, and hats off to the designer for this aspect.
 
Sharp edges !

I think designers do pretty well on the outside of boats .

Total flops down below. Perhaps they hand over this job to Ikea and Wickes.
 
Seajet said:
For us cross-Channel types, pray enlighten as to this watermaker ?
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It was a thing like a baby torpedo which you towed behind the boat, the propellor on the back turned like a log spinner and drove a high-pressure pump, and then it made fresh water via the standard reverse-osmosis process and sent it up a tube that was embedded in the tow-rope and into a container on the boat. So you got a constant trickle of fresh water with zero electricity consumption, just potentially a slight loss of speed.

A very attractive idea, the trouble is that by all accounts the damn thing simply didn't work!

Apparently there were some dramatic forum threads on the subject, hence its fond memory when brought up, but it was all before my time.

Pete
 
Lifebuoy lights hung upside down on clip. Lenses always fill with water despite all attempts to seal properly (i.e. They suck in water by design). The switches (usually a ball bearing) corrode quickly and fail) and the light is often feeble if it does work. Strobe versions seem to fail as easily.

I've come to the conclusion that most "life saving" equipment on a yacht is "designed" in a coffee break and never actually tested properly.

I need to replace one this year and hope that newer ones are better (but expect to be disappointed).
 
That useless instantly corroding small Honda outboard with the horrible clutch and ridiculously designed cowl flap that you love so much. It's not just that it's a horrible penny pinched patently non-marine piece of rubbish, but it's from a company with a previous excellent reputation for engineering. They can do so much better.
 
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