BOAT TESTING IS A VERY esoteric occupation I must admit. In a matter of hours you are required to form an opinion on a boat that could have a serious impact on the future wellbeing of the company - not to mention prospective owners. It's tough, and it's made tougher because manufacturers simply do not build bad boats any more. Yet, before you reach for the world's smallest violin, I should add that this is also a positive. Yes, the sailing is generally a joyous affair, yet the other aspect of the tests is the human element. You are generally stuck on a yacht with one or perhaps two complete strangers for anything between a couple of hours and a day. As you can imagine, that can be anything from interesting and enlightening, to an endurance test in itself. Some of my more surreal highlights include being taken out for a sail off Istanbul and then asking the crew afterwards if a trip into downtown Istanbul was advisable to which they said 'yes, it's lovely, just ignore the teargas'. Presumably there was a bit of turbulence in the city back then. Other personal favourites include hitting Brambles Bank at 12kn in a brand new boat: 'let's just agree that never happened' we collectively muttered once we'd finally got the boat off. I also spent a oddly intimate night on a boat in Spain with a German boatbuilder who insisted I sleep aboard to understand how good the boat was. Unfortunately he also decided he should cook and proceeded to incinerate what looked like a cow's heart; 'what is it?' I said prodding it tentatively with a fork: 'not sure, I don't speak Spanish' he replied. Early on in my career as a sailing journalist I was also tasked with testing used boats, often an eye opener - this was a time where it was possible to test sail a boat that was truly bad - usually because the sails were shot. This was awkward because you would often be aboard with the owner, trying to wring some sort of peformance out of a boat that refused to sail. Later you would descend into the malodourous cabin and the proud owner would affix you with a glittering eye and ask 'what do you think?' As I say, the problem from a sailing point of view was almost always knackered sails, so the article on p68 of this issue may be a good place for some to start.