THE GIFT OF KNOWLEDGE

At the time I felt I was being punished and you couldn’t convince me otherwise. If not a cruel punishment, then at the very least some sort of rookie hazing or initiation for the new guy. For my first Shootout Boat Test assignment – well over 20 years ago – I got stuck doing the on-trailer inspection part of our test, which meant I spent my entire week in the parking lot while everyone else was down at the docks.

The on-trailer test is where you cover every square inch of every boat, with constant measuring being required for up top as well as below the boat. With few pontoons having full aluminum skins below at that time, it was much easier to measure the distance between the cross members and see how the wiring was secured.

With limited actual boat knowledge, I was of course just the scribe with the clipboard for the on-trailer test, not even the one who got to hold the tape measure.

The on-trailer part was the first step of our test and from there the boat would be launched. Consumer testing, radar gun runs, performance review, and the still photography was all being done on the water.

Up in the parking lot I was paired with the late John Barr, who was a freelance writer of ours at the time. We had hired him to work our test years earlier when we were first starting out because his knowledge of boats and the boating industry in general was practically more than the rest of our young staff combined. Barr gave our Shootout test the credibility we needed and his experience as well as his legacy knowledge of the industry made him a very valuable member of the test crew.

Despite my longing to get out the water and be with the rest of my co-workers, I fortunately didn’t squander the valuable opportunity to learn from Barr. Instead of merely checking boxes and writing in numbers as I was told like a typical kid in his mid 20s might do, I actually paid close attention. I soaked up his wisdom and tried to learn from his decades of boating experience.

For the next three or four years I gained invaluable knowledge as Barr’s scribe as we did the on-trailer test each time, and while I still could hardly wait to be one of the staff members at the dock, I at least learned to appreciate all that Barr was passing on to me to help me gain my own experience.

Eventually Barr retired from our crew and then sadly my friend passed away from cancer way too early in life a few years later. With my 25 years at the helm of PDB magazine nearing on the horizon, I often think back to my early years and how much Barr taught me.

We’ve had another successful year of testing and the results are nicely packaged within the pages of this Boat Test issue. Our test has evolved over the years with more emphasis on video than ever before, but the root of our test has remained the same. What has also evolved are the boats themselves. It was easier to nit-pick a $30K pontoon back then for what it lacked or where certain features were placed. Now with boats being designed by teams of engineers using the latest technology advancements (and hovering in the $200K price range) it’s actually getting harder to find something for our “just being picky” section of our reviews. It’s a great time to be in the industry and I sincerely hope our reviews and the videos from our test that are available at www.pdbmagazine.com help you make the best boat-buying decision this year.