SOTW speed on the water
 

If I may make a suggestion. I prefer reading up on peoples restorations and upgrades of older boats to some guy who ordered the latest skater or outerlimits with merc power.

Thanks

thats the beauty of oso,a diverse group with many different topics of discusion.

SOTW has those stories too. A couple of months ago, they did a story on a refreshed 36 Skater. There are several articles on the 47 Apache being redone. If you don't like the blogs, then don't read them. At least they are still around to give us insight from and on all major events. How many other journalists are still around? Many magazines died doing stories on Bayliners getting new interiors.

You make a valid point: Project stories are important, too, and we don't have one in the July/August issue, which went live today. (Here's the download link, http://speedonthewater.com/in-the-ne...download&id=12.) For reasons of editorial balance, we want to have a least one project/restoration story in every issue. Unfortunately, the timing didn't work out for this issue. Fortunately, it will work for the next one.

Projects that have appeared in the D-pub so far this year include: Gary Ballough's race-to-pleasure Skater 32 conversion (Jan/Feb issue) and a Baja 40 interior restoration (May/June issue). So while we don't have one in every issue, they do appear somewhat regularly. Still, having one in very issue remains a goal.

Now, if you're referring to the daily site (speedonthewater.com) we have published lots of project stories—we have three of them ongoing and quite diverse from one another right now.

Of course we can do more, and of course we can do better. That's one of the best parts of this job.

We are a diverse crowd and I personally like the over the top, spent stupid money boats as well as the resto stuff that more fits my budget......

You are from alone, my friend. I spend more hours than I care to admit analyzing our Google analytics, as well as the internal numbers provided by our content management system. People love over-the-top new product stories—that's not an opinion, it's fact supported by hard numbers. I've worked on publications where people in editorial and ad sales began to believe, for whatever reason, that "project stories" were silver bullets. And yet title after title that tried to live on those stories alone failed. There has to be balance.

Regardless, project stories are incredibly valuable and we will not ignore them. We just need to plan a little better so we can have one in every issue.

Every time I see SOTW I think of Smoke on the Water (whatever happened to Boatme?)

Anyway...to make a car analogy, nothing gets my heart beating like a '67 Chevelle 396SS or same vintage GTO, but I sure as heck am all over the latest Porsches too. Each has their place.

Over the top is nice, but when it's 10 or 15 budgets away, well... What's the point.
Cool boats but many of us will never be close to one let alone ride in or drive in it.
My 02.but then again I live in the desert on a small oasis

I get that, at least a Porsche is within reality. Those who buy those preposterous boats are so far beyond the normal wage earner it's hard to even relate or to be honest, even care. Still cool but not reality.

I was so proud to own my sh!tbox PowerPlay but sometimes I'd have one of those jet engine Skaters blow past me like I was going backwards, you could only laugh.