What is the worst sailing or marine invention ever?

[lustyd]

Anything and everything that attempts to replace a simple knot in rope with a piece of plastic. You know, the sort of thing you don't really buy on purpose but you're walking around the chandlery one rainy day and it's the only thing you can afford that you don't already own. Often manifesting as fender hangers which inevitably break while you're away from the boat, losing fenders, hangers, and that lovely shine on your topsides all in one go.

I've resisted them so far

 

[OldBawley]

If you think jet ski´s are a nuisance, just visit the Hydra, Spetses, Poros area in Greece.

There the rich and famous of Greece play with their school building size mobo´s in jet ski fashion.
Polluting the sea and creating tsunami waves.
I counted more than 50 of them ( All > 30 m ) on one afternoon sail. All of them full speed.

Exactly at 17 h the sea is empty, the bays are full, then each of them unloads 3 to 4 jet ski´s.

 

[Daydream believer]

I have found the telescopic deck brush to be absolutely brilliant for hull scrubbing in the water. (I've always had the Vikan ones which extend to 2.8m or thereabouts - used to be readily available in chandlers, but harder to get hold of now I fear. A quick online search finds various brushes which seem to extend up to the length of a broom handle, which I too would find useless.....)

Fix a brush to one half of a a sailboard boom ( shove a bit of broom handle in the boom & screw the brush on)& it will curve around the hull
Attach a fender & it will push upwards to help apply more pressure to the brush
If you have an extending boom it will reach quite a long way & can even be used whilst standing on deck as well as from off a pontoon
best of all - it is cheap

 

[Stemar]

I'd agree with most of the above - apart from the infernal combustion engine. Jissel is strictly a gentleman sailor, so if the wind's in the wrong direction, I'd be stuffed without my trusty 2003.

Also, it's practically impossible to row either of the flubbers I've owned, so the OB is a must, which brings me to my candidate for the worst sailing invention, inflatable dinghy rowlocks, which are nearly all exactly what they rhyme with. Zodiac ones allow you to slide the oars, but break if you use enough strength to go anywhere, and the pin-through-the-oar type guarantee an entanglement of oars with knees, preventing forward movement.

 

[Firefly625]

the charter boat

 

[Iliade]

Marinas

 

[flaming]

The spinnaker snuffer.

 

[doug748]

The Air-X wind generator.

 

[Barnacle Bill]

The gas alarm. See other thread.

 

[AntarcticPilot]

I beg to differ; although mine was a home-made one with a domestic transistor radio - with the long-wave extended to cover the RDF beacon frequencies - fitted into a wooden pelorus mounted on the aft bulkhead. The pelorus was marked in degrees from the yacht's bow and the null noted and applied to the current compass heading, thus giving the beacon's bearing.

Returning from Holland to NE Yorkshire a lifetime or two ago I was overtaken by a full gale six hours out of Den Helder and lay a-hull for 17 hours, after which my trusty RDF unit and three beacons put me in a surprisingly small cocked hat slap in the middle of the North Sea with my destination, Whitby, 100nm directly west of my position. I had drifted 42nm from my previous DR position before lowering all sail.

The worst yachting development is absolutely teak decks screwed down to the grp base... Time to go to replace another set of teak plugs and sink the screws to accept them.

I suspect you were using a proper loop antenna, which has a better discrimination. The handheld SeaFix device used a ferrite rod antenna, which gave lower sensitivity and poorer directional perfomance. I think the receiver wasn't all that brilliant, either! It worked, but was only worth bothering with if visibility was too poor for anything else.

 

[RupertW]

Chemical flares
Liferaft

 

[Summer Sailor]

What is the worst sailing or marine invention ever?

I put a few on my website below but I just wondered what your thoughts were?

McGregor's, in mast furling, electric winches and marpa.

 

[BrianH]

I suspect you were using a proper loop antenna, which has a better discrimination. The handheld SeaFix device used a ferrite rod antenna, which gave lower sensitivity and poorer directional perfomance. I think the receiver wasn't all that brilliant, either! It worked, but was only worth bothering with if visibility was too poor for anything else.

No, the antenna on my system was a coil-wound ferrite rod positioned within the top of the radio casing and all very compact - it was, in fact, quite a quality, portable receiver. It fitted into a pivoting base that formed the pelorus and the entire unit was rotated and was very selective with reception highly dependant on orientation. A null was discernible through about 20° but easy - with practice - to interpolate the centre bearing from the AF on either side.

Yes, I was familiar with loop antennas for RDF during my RAF national service days as an aircrew signaller, which had also given me Morse code experience so I was well prepared to use the principle.

I agree, the Seafix was not an easy unit to use. In my limited experience of trying a friend's one, the receiver seemed to have poor sensitivity and selectivity (as you point out) - I suspect it lacked an RF stage and sufficient IF stages. But the major difficulty was in trying to keep the compass steady in a seaway while trying to detect a null in the earphones. My pelorus principle was infinitely better, IMO ... perhaps I should have tried to patent it. No Dragons' Den in those days.

 

[Colvic Watson]

I liked the Seafix RDF.

To add to the list - bermudan rig - the Microsoft Windows of rig design, neither innovative or intuitive and blames its failings on the user.

 

[billmacfarlane]

I'll second the RDF. Coming back in thick fog from Fecamp pre Decca days, my RDF FIX confirmed my estimated fix to within a mile. I really should have known better. Both were miles out mid Channel. I was heading for Littlehampton. I ended up in Chichester. Totally useless piece of electrickery. Mind you so was my nav that day.

The Seafarer RDF. For those of you lucky enough never to have come across one, it was an instrument of torture used by my father. He would give the machine to me and you began by inserting a stethoscope like device into your ears. Then having turned it on you were supposed to set the frequency and aim it, it had a large compass on the top of it. You got an earful of static and then a morse letter, I think when you were pointing it at the distant station. You then read the bearing off the top. Repeat three time for different stations and draw a cocked hat, about the size of Luxembourg on your chart. Sorry if this is wrong, only excessive amounts of beer the night before and one of these horrors have made me seasick. In fact just the thought is making me feel a bit queasy.

 

[Nostrodamus]

Battery level indicator.
When you anchor a lot you just have to keep checking it...

 

[Uricanejack]

Easy

GPS

It would be a whole lot quieter out here without it.

I think you might just have it though I am probably going to be the only +1

 

[Uricanejack]

The Seafarer RDF. For those of you lucky enough never to have come across one, it was an instrument of torture used by my father. He would give the machine to me and you began by inserting a stethoscope like device into your ears. Then having turned it on you were supposed to set the frequency and aim it, it had a large compass on the top of it. You got an earful of static and then a morse letter, I think when you were pointing it at the distant station. You then read the bearing off the top. Repeat three time for different stations and draw a cocked hat, about the size of Luxembourg on your chart. Sorry if this is wrong, only excessive amounts of beer the night before and one of these horrors have made me seasick. In fact just the thought is making me feel a bit queasy.

I used to use one and found it quite handy.
Omega, now that really was useless.

 

[Daydream believer]

instead of the Seafix I had - & still have- a Nova pal. I f I could post a photo I would
This was a radio with a rotating aerial
It sat on a fixed bracket at 90 degrees to the boat axis & when the aerial was rotated to point to the null of a signal the degrees were read off the top. These were then added to the boat heading to give the bearing
Being a radio it was also useful for getting radio Luxembourg after 19-00 hours every night & I can remember regularly falling asleep at night with the earpiece in my ear & waking in pain an hour or so later

As a navigation aid I found it very good.One had to learn morse & exactly how to use it. There were more than a dozen lightships in the Thames estuary & many transmitted signals so a fix was not that hard if the boat was not rolling too much
The most powerful was the tongue light vessel & one could home in on it from Ostend etc before heading through the Edinburgh channel then up the Blackdeep & over the sunk sands back to Burnham. Or if i really felt flash i would head for the Fishermans Gat, which in those days was just a dimple in the Longsands. Invariably i missed & ran aground

To me the most frustrating piece of kit was my Seafarer echo sounder which had the habit of showing tens of flashing lights around a ring when one was getting shallow & it had to be tuned in rapidly to determine the depth as one ran aground .The PP9 battery would always go flat at night approaching the sands. Still, it made sure I got to be really proficient with a bamboo cane!!!

The best bit of kit was my Sestral grid compass which I have had for 45 years & to this day sits under my tiller. I have an electric compass, a bulkhead compass & 2 GPS's plus a chart plotter but I still glance at the Sestral from time to time - just to check

 

[BrianH]

instead of the Seafix I had - & still have- a Nova pal. I f I could post a photo I would

This one?

Your post made me google for it and I came up with this page - I had no idea how many RDF units there have been on the market. http://www.angelfire.com/space/proto57/rdf.html