On Feb 8, 12:36 pm, Charlie Morgan wrote:
On 8 Feb 2007 12:48:58 -0800, "b393capt" wrote:
....
Practical Sailor has a history of recommending and trashing products
on a fair basis, and is very reliable.

I would dispute that in very strong terms. Their testing methods are about as
unscientific as possible, and their "recommendations" often have nothing to do
with what product was better.
....

There are certainly some problems with PS. They are a small shop,
perhaps even a little inbred, and have limited human and financial
resources. I suspect their work is sometimes influenced by their need
to maintain some good will with the industry. Despite this, they
appear far less beholden to the industry than any other marine
publication I know. I'm convinced that they are making an effort to
be honest in their evaluations and are concerned about their
reputation. I read them. Still, your point about testing and rating
has some validity. For instance, I think their recent review of
winches was worse than useless. I've put thousands of hours onto
three of the brands of winches they reviewed and can attest that there
are huge differences in design, quality and maintainability between
them, and some have well known failure modes. Yet they missed all of
that and concluded that there was no significant difference between
the brands... So, I don't take their opinion as gospel, but I do
think that, on the whole, they do a better job of reviewing marine
gear than anyone else and their opinions deserve a sympathetic
reading.

-- Tom.