About a month ago, I had a conversation with the Managing Editor of a
national fishing magazine about boats. In particular boat reviews.

As a part of that conversation, I was invited to participate in a
series of boat tests that the magazine will be publishing as part of a
series starting sometime next year. There may even be a chance for
some of these tests to appear on TV - that's not a given, just a
possibility.

Anyway, I spent the day messing about with 5 boats, all small center
consoles as that's my particular area of interest. An extra added
bonus was a flats boat which was one style of boat I've never really
had the chance to wring out.

Had a good time, learned a lot, imparted some ideas I have concerning
visibility, storage access, seating, placement of instrumentation -
things like that.

The highlight of the day was the result of a couple of posts done here
on rec.boats. I was inspired by the MOB "rescue" post and one other
post that was related to it. Basically I wanted to know how, and if,
I could get into a boat if I fell out - unassisted. This was also
based on personal experience, so I had a pretty sound reason.

Stroke of genius that was. When I mentioned what I wanted to do to
the other participants, they looked at me like I was nuts. When I
explained my reasoning, all of a sudden the light bulbs went off and
all agreed that it would not only be fun, but a good idea.

I had brought my wet suit with me on the vague hope they would let me
do it. Discussion over, I suited up and with a boat standing by,
jumped overboard to see just how easy it was for a 6'3", 250 lbs,
partially crippled handsome fisherman to reenter the boat.

The results were interesting to say the least. I won't spoil
anything, but I will say that even with a bracket, it's not that easy
to get back into a boat without a boarding ladder of some sort and
even then, it could be questionable if the ladder isn't properly
placed and/or sturdy enough.

I had a blast doing it and hopefully I will be invited back to do some
more "oddball" testing.