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 Shining lights at the end of the tunnel
'I'm gonna punch your *@&-ing head in,' spat the caller down my phone line, before slamming the receiver down in my ear.
He wasn't an SP bookie. Not an ex-girlfriend's father. He wasn't even a motorist I'd enraged during morning peak hour. He was a boat builder, albeit not a very good one.
No, on second thoughts, he was okay as a boat builder – it was his boat that sucked, and I'd intimated this in a review.
It mattered not that I'd anguished over every word, toning the report down in parts as I tip-toed through the minefield of libel laws while respecting the interests of potential buyers.
He wanted a PR hack, not a journalist.
The boat in question was a '70s-something planing hull that the builder had seen fit to transform into a displacement cruiser with a small diesel inboard.
It had the nautical little wheel and the teak trimmings but the diesel revved hard for minimum result and scant attention had been paid to noise reduction.
Only in Australia could such a 'new' boat exist. Holden wouldn't dream of building another FJ Holden but there's always someone ready to grab ye olde boat mould and build something 'traditional'.
There's a light at the end of the tunnel, though, and it's called Sydney International Boat Show. I'm really excited by the list of boats lining up, all of them fresh and pregnant with promise.
 | | Sydney International Boat Show 2010 MarineBusiness-World.com . |
The one good thing about the GFC is that it's forced manufacturers to fire up their R&D departments. Who says there's nothing new under the sun?
Mark Rothfield
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