This is a transcript of Mad Mariner's MadCast, the podcast that covers all aspects of boats and boating. In this edition, our guest is Lenny Rudow, a boater and journalist with extensive experience testing hundreds of boats of all sizes and types. You've probably heard the term dozens of times, but what exactly is a boat test? Rudow explains what the job involves, as well as how boaters can apply some of the same measures when they're looking to buy, with Mad Mariner's contributing editor, Diane M. Byrne.

Good morning. Let's start with your beginnings. About how long have you been a boater?

Lenny Rudow: Well, they tell me that when I was two years old, my dad propped me up in front of the steering wheel and helped me turn the boat, so going back that far, I'd say 38 years.

And obviously, you've been boat testing since you were two. Can you estimate about how long you've been doing that?

Rudow: Well, the actual testing I've been doing for different publications is about 15 years now.

I would think you've probably tested a good number of boats in that time.

Rudow: Yeah. I figure it's somewhere between 7- and 800 different boats, and they've ranged from everything from an 8-foot-long electric-powered fun boat to a 72-foot Hatteras.

That is quite the variety. Okay, so then what exactly is a boat test? Is it a matter of basically getting on a boat and taking a look around, or is it a bit more in-depth?

Rudow: Well it can vary, depending on the different publications that you're writing for, but generally, it consists of two basic components. The first would be the walkthrough, where you simply look at the boat, look at how it's laid out, look at the interior of the boat. If you're in a small center console, look at the fishing features, things like that. And the second component would be the sea trial. And again, depending on how in-depth a boat review is going to be, or simply sometimes how much time you have, that can be as quick as an hour run out into the bay, or it can mean several days on a boat. And there have also been several boats that I've done long-term tests on, where I've operated them for a full year before writing up the reviews.

So as far as Mad Mariner is concerned, I would think that you've probably just done a couple of hours. Any of you listeners, if you are boat builders and you want us to take a boat long-term, we'd gladly take it. But so far, I think for Mad Mariner, we've only been able to do a few hours on sea trials. Is that correct?

Rudow: Basically, yeah"¦ The Sailfish I did for Mad Mariner, I did spend a pretty good bit of time on"¦ a year or two. And unfortunately, with a couple of them, I had hoped to spend an entire day fishing on the boats. With a fishing boat, that's a wonderful way to get a real grasp of how well the boat's designed. Of course, with the Sailfish, we ended up with practically hurricane winds and left the fishing rods at home, but we'll get it next time.

Let's talk about that for a second, those types of conditions. What is an ideal condition as far as the winds are concerned for a boat test? Is it flat, calm, or do you really want the seas to be a little bit messy?

Rudow: I really do like it a little bit sloppy. The flat-calm days are actually the toughest to really ascertain just how well a boat performs. You know, you can try and get around that. There are a couple ways. If it's absolutely flat-calm and there's nobody around, I'll go out and I'll turn donuts. I'll turn donuts for five minutes, and then I'll drive for five minutes away from where I just turned the donuts, and then turn around and drive right back through all the waves that I made. Now of course, there's a downside to this. If there are other people nearby, they generally don't tend to appreciate that too much. We get some crazy looks sometimes from people who are in calm water and thinking "What in the heck are those people doing?"

The other thing that I will often do is, if I'm anywhere near a busy channel or an inlet, I'll go and look for boat traffic. Boat wakes do have a different impact on how a boat performs than wind-driven waves do. They're tighter. They're steeper. And the boat will generally react to them a little bit differently. So you can't get an exact grasp of how a boat acts in a seaway, but I guess the good part of that is that boat wakes tend to be a little tougher on a boat. Because they are taller and tighter, you do get a little bit of a bumpier feeling from them most often. If I can't get those rough conditions, I'll do my darndest to make them.

Now, with the test you were just mentioning, with the hurricane-like winds, have there been many tests where you've had conditions that rough, or are most of them relatively calm?

Rudow: Well it really does depend on the situation, although I will tell you I have tested one boat, a 24-foot Boston Whaler, in an actual hurricane. We were desperate to get it done. And the boat was in protected water, so we knew we couldn't have waves that were, you know, too horribly big. And we did our walkthrough under the cover of a boathouse, and then took it out into a canal in Florida and ran it back and forth in probably three-foot seas in a canal that couldn't have been much more than 100 yards wide. But we were desperate to get that one done. It had been scheduled several times and cancelled for weather. And it was really just a necessity that we get this boat tested. I had already flown down to Florida. That test was for a boating magazine, and they had already spent an awful lot of money trying to put me on that Whaler, so darnit, we were going to get it done. And I can't tell you it lasted a real long time.

When you're doing these donuts and evaluating how the boat's performing with the wakes, what else do you do? I know you record speed numbers. Why don't you explain exactly how you do that.

Rudow: Well, actually, it's been an interesting evolution in the time that I've been testing boats. When I first started, we had these big, bulky radar guns that we would hook up to the batteries of the boat. And we would have to find a good radar target, like a channel marker, and have to drive straight at it. And so sometimes, we'd be doing 40 miles an hour in a direct line at a channel marker, so we could get the radar to bounce off of it. That changed into handheld radar guns that had batteries in them, so we didn't have to hook into the battery systems in the boat anymore. And then, of course, GPS came along. And the early GPSes did not update quickly enough. You would have to stay at the same rpm for quite some time to get a solid reading. But they've become so good at this point, most units really are so magnificent at updating and tracking your speed that these days, pretty much everything is done by GPS.

For some boat tests, I'll also take fuel flow, and again, that's been a tremendous evolution in the last decade or so. It used to be that we would have to tap into the fuel lines of every boat and install meters. And with these little boats, that was a real issue, because of course, a diesel has not just the supply line, but also the return line. You actually had to hook two meters into the boat, and then have a computer to do the calculations to subtract the fuel being returned to the fuel tank from the fuel that was being sucked in by the motor to get your actual burn. Fortunately, in the last five or six years, just about all the motors now have gone electronic, and the vast majority of them have a digital readout at the dash that gives you an excellent fuel-flow number. When the digitals first came out, we did test them against our meters and found that they were really just dead-on, so that's made life a lot easier. Now, some of the engines, some of the smaller engines in particular – the smaller outboards, some small stern-drive boats – they still do not have the electronic fuel-flow meters. And for those, there are several different ways. I do have some meters that I install directly in line, and I also have some graduated cylinders where I'll fill the cylinder with fuel. I'll install it in the fuel line, fill it up, shut off the fuel line, and then take a stopwatch and time how long the engine takes to burn out the fuel in the cylinder, and then it's a matter of simple math to figure out how much fuel it's burning.

Of course, we also like to do sound levels, and that's very simple to take with a dB-A meter. You can get it at Radio Shack. It's the same dB-A meter that the police use to judge if a party is too noisy. And we simply hold those at the helm, try and protect them from the wind, because the wind can throw them off, and get a reading on just how loud any particular boat is. One of the really interesting things I've seen through years with the dB-A meters is outboard boats. We used to regularly see 100, 102, 104 dB-As, which is a lot of noise. And of course, everybody was running 2-strokes back then. Nowadays, with all the 4-strokes on the back of the boat, the sound levels are radically lower. It's rare that they get out of the 90s, and usually, they're in the low 90s, so it's a really interesting development that we've seen in the marine industry.

Another detail that I like to look for is level of inclination. I'll put a inclinometer on a boat that I'm testing, and simply check it and see how many degrees of inclination a boat has as it's getting up onto plane, how much that bow rises up into the air. And then of course, I'm also looking to see if it blocks my view as it's rising on the plane. That's a very simple piece of equipment that anybody can get and anybody can use. All your marine supply stores have them, and they just cost $10 or $15. So it's another thing that if someone's going to test a boat for themselves, they can go and get an inclinometer easy enough.

Well I guess that's most of the numerical items that I look for on a boat when I'm testing them. And you know, with today's boats, most people can go and do pretty much the same thing, as long as they have a handheld GPS, and they're testing a boat that has enough horsepower that it has digital fuel flow already installed. All you need from there is the dB-A meter and the inclinometer, which are simple, easy items to get.

Let's take a step back. When you're collecting all this data, how do you break it down? Do you do it by the speed that the boat is going, say, every few knots, every 5 knots or so, or do you do it by an rpm level?

Rudow: I like to go by rpm, simply because it's a solid figure that you can compare apples to apples to apples against every different boat you look at. And once you get your fuel flow and your speed for any given rpm range, it's a very simple matter to figure out how efficient the boat is, how many miles per gallon are you getting, or in the case of some really large boats, how many gallons per mile are you getting.

Let's switch to the walkthrough now. When you are evaluating the layout of the boat, what are some of the things that you look for?

Rudow: Ergonomics is huge. On boats, of course, every inch of space has to be used to its fullest. And whether a boat is a 15-foot boat or 50-foot boat, how the boat is laid out has a huge impact on how happy someone will be with it. Now, here's where you get into some really big difference between, say, a cruising boat and a fishing boat, or a day boat, or a boat that's designed to live aboard for some period of time. Of course, you know, a trawler is going to have a very, very different use of space than a sportfish will. And each boat really has to be in its own regard in this matter. You have to go into a boat reminding yourself what the boat's purpose is and what someone's going to use it for. Very early on in my boat-testing career, I was assigned to do a lot of midcabin cruisers, and because of the type of boating that I do, I had really never spent a lot of time aboard a midcabin cruiser. And it took probably 10 or 15 boat tests before I really started to get a grasp on how the space was used differently, or on how they were maximizing, say, the sleeping arrangements and sacrificing other things, say, cockpit space, in order to gain those maximum sleeping arrangements. So as you go through a boat, you have to remind yourself this is what it's designed for. And then you have to ask yourself, does it meet those requirements? Does it give you what it's trying to give you? And you also have to constantly remind yourself that everything aboard a boat is a tradeoff. There's no such thing as the perfect boat. There's no such thing as the best boat. Some boats are better at other things than other boats are. And you have to be careful not to knock a boat because, let's say, it has a really small cockpit, and you personally like a really big cockpit, because it might be designed for people who like that little cockpit, and like to have the interior space that it gives you.

I would imagine the manufacturers have given you a heads-up that, oh, "this boat has the most headroom out of our entire fleet," or "we have a new stateroom configuration." Do you ever actually go in there and measure the headroom, or really re-evaluate that stateroom configuration compared to other boats that are similar, whether they're from that manufacturer or other manufacturers?

Rudow: Absolutely. Headroom is the kind of thing that I will measure, berth length, things like this; however, when the manufacturer tells me something, I try and completely open my ears and let it go in one and out the other. Well, let's face facts. The manufacturer's representative is there to convince you that his boat is the best boat in the world. Every boat is that boat builder's baby. One of the things you have to remember about the marine industry is that most guys don't get into it to get rich. They get into it because they love boats. And most of the designers and most of the builders really do feel like any particular boat that they build, it's their baby. And it's not even that the representatives are trying to mislead you, so much as they're automatically incredibly biased. So when someone says something like that, I really do try and let it go in one ear and out the other. I give them a big smile and nod my head, and then try and make my own decisions.

Do they ever accompany you on these tests, or are you doing some of them solo?

Rudow: You really need a manufacturer's representative there simply to answer some questions. Often there are construction questions like, let's say, something as simple as the thickness of the fiberglass layout. You can't tell by looking at it. The manufacturer's rep has to be there to let you know. And you'll also find a lot of times, the manufacturers are trying to put their best foot forward and get the bids out there as quickly as possible. And a lot of times, you'll be on a prototype, and you may have something, let's say, a stern couch that you look at it and you think, "Wow, that's really too skinny. I don't know if I can sit on that comfortably." Well, if the manufacturer's rep isn't there, you can't mention that to him and learn that "Oh, by the way, this is the prototype, and on the production boat, yeah, we decided that stern couch was too skinny, so we're adding six inches to it." Things like that you really need a manufacturer's rep there for. And of course, you also need someone to be driving the boat when you're gathering all your numbers. It's impossible to safely run the boat and pay attention to what's going on around you, and at the same time, gather all your figures on your speed, and your rpm and your fuel flow, so you really do need that manufacturer's representative there with you.

How about equipment? Do they ever tell you ahead of time that they've put special equipment on the boat, whether it's a new engine? I'm thinking about the Volvo Penta IPS drives. When those first came out, I know a lot of the manufacturers were touting them. But has there ever been a situation where they're touted some other type of equipment to you?

Rudow: Yeah, actually, you're hitting on one of the toughest things about boat testing, and another reason why the manufacturer's rep has to be there. Any boat buyer, anyone who's been around boats, knows most boats are built in a stock fashion, and then there are a gazillion and one options you can get. And of course, they tend to show you, as a boat tester, the boat that has a gazillion and two options. They want to show you their finest creation, and they put all these different things on there, when the truth of the matter is, the boat buyer himself may only be looking at a boat with half of these options on it. One that comes to mind is a Ricky Scarborough I tested some years back, a 60-foot sportfish, had these immense, tremendous outriggers on it. I had never seen outriggers like them in my life! These things were huge! And when I was writing up the boat test later on, I looked in the standard equipment list, and I noticed that it listed regular outriggers, so I had to take a step back. And I called the manufacturer's rep up and I said, "What was the deal with those outriggers? I see on your standard equipment list, you list this particular brand, but I don't think that's what the ones on that boat were." And he said, "Oh, oh my goodness, no, those were special custom outriggers we had designed and built just for this boat, because the owner wanted these gigantic outriggers." And I thought, "My gosh, well I sure am glad I now know to erase the line that I wrote about what incredible outriggers this boat comes with."

A minute ago, you were talking about the example of a skinny couch on a boat, and how the boat builder sometimes will say, "Oh, well, that's just for the prototype. For the real production line, we've got a larger one." Has there ever been a situation where you've noticed something that really doesn't work properly, or maybe even something as serious as a true flaw in a design, and have mentioned it to a boat builder and they've gone later on and fixed it down the line?

Rudow: Absolutely. It happens quite a bit, particularly with the better builders. Lower-level builders, builders of really inexpensive boats, sometimes they're just most interested in pushing the boat out the door, and they're not real worried about improving it. Well, when you work with a- a good builder, they're very interested in hearing what you say. And just so that we put everybody on a fair playing field, I'll usually mention all of the low points that I've picked up on a boat to the rep and I'll say, "Hey, do you have any plans to change this? Would you consider changing this?" so that when I'm writing the review, if they say "You know, you're right. We need to fix that," I can say in the review, "Well the boat had this flaw, but they say they're going to fix this."

A great example of that is the Riviera 3000 Express, which was a boat that I tested originally probably 12 or 14 years ago. And when I tested it, I've got to tell you. I thought the boat was a mess. The rigging was hanging down. The wires and the plumbing, in particular, they had secured maybe once every foot, instead of where it really needed to be secured every six inches. And I mentioned this in the review, and I got a letter about a month later from the president of Riviera. And he said, "We appreciate your comments. We think you're right." Now this is a rare thing. Usually, the letter that comes in says, "You jerk. How could you say that horrible thing about my baby?" But this was a company that was really concerned with making a quality product. And the next time I got on a Riviera, I've got to tell you. Every plumbing line and every electric line was much tighter. It was loomed properly. It was supported much better than they had been. And I tested their newest version of the 3000 a couple years ago, and it was like a whole different boat. It was just a much better boat.

Another great example is a Grady-White I tested one time. Now Grady-White, everybody knows, is a top-level company. They really care about what they're building. And you get that feeling from their people when you go on the boat with them. And we were testing one"”I forget the exact model"”some years ago, and as we were running the boat, I filled the livewell up. And I like to do this, because on a lot of boats, the livewell looks great and so you actually try and use it, and then you discover all kinds of problems with it. Well I filled this livewell up, and what I discovered was when the boat was running through pretty steep seas"”and we had three- and four-foot seas that day"”if the livewell was filled and running, it literally would slosh out from underneath the lid. If you were sitting on the seat built on top of the livewell, that meant the backs of your legs got all wet. And I said to him, "Oh, look at this. The livewell is sloshing out." He looked at me and he said, "Gosh darnit! I can't believe we didn't pick that up already. The next time you see one of these boats, that is not going to happen." And about a month later, I saw another one of those boats, and they had redesigned the system that secures the livewell lid down. It was twice as taut as it used to be, and sure enough, when you run the boat, no water sloshed out.

I hope the answer to this is no, but I'll ask anyway. Has there ever been a situation where you've pointed out something, whether it's a major or a minor flaw, and the boat builder's rep has requested that you not mention it in a story?

Rudow: Well I can't say I've ever had one say, "Don't mention that" straight out. Usually, they will attempt to argue the point with you. Let's say you spot an anchor locker, and in the anchor locker, there is no access from inside the cabin. And the anchor locker hatch is very tight, not big enough to get your shoulder through. And let's say the boat has a windlass on it. Well, my first comment would be, "Gee whiz, I can't get to the anchor locker from below, and I can only get one arm in at a time. What happens when, not if, but when the anchor rope tangles into a knot underneath of that windlass, and the windlass sucks it in and gets a big wedgie in it?" That's something that I've experienced many times. There are a lot of boats out there that have that particular design flaw. And the manufacturer might come right back and say, "Oh, we use the best windlass. They don't tangle." That's more likely the kind of response I would get than to say, "Oh, well, please don't mention that." Now, I've been testing boats for a long time for a lot of different people, and I think most of the guys who've been in this business for awhile know that if I see something I really don't like, I'm going to mention it, so that may be one reason why I don't get that argument often.

You were mentioning a couple of boat tests that were pretty interesting, where you noticed something that could have been done different and the boat builder responded. You also earlier mentioned some tests where you were able to go out fishing for a couple days. Why don't you highlight one or two pretty memorable boat tests that you've done.

Rudow: Oh, boy. Well, let's see. One of my favorites was the boat where it was a 24-foot walkaround, an outboard boat, and it had a fishbox in the cockpit, a removable fishbox. And I opened the deck hatch, and I removed the fishbox and stuck my head down there, looked around where they never expected anybody to stick their head and look around, and what I saw when I looked forward was the cushions in the V-berth. I thought, "My goodness. Look at that. I can look all the way underneath of the deck of this boat." And what the builder had done was cut all of the bulkheads about two inches too short. Well, they made an attempt at piling fiberglass putty on top of the bulkheads to reach the deck, but of course, it all just kind of flopped off to either side. And then I started jumping up and down in the middle of the deck, and it was nice and springy. Obviously, this is not a good situation. That was a very memorable one, because as I walked off of that boat, I thought to myself, "Whatever poor soul buys this boat is going to end up with a boat that's going to be trashed in a year or two. It's just not going to last. It's going to fall apart." What we ended up doing from a journalist perspective was, we simply killed the review. And we talked to the manufacturer and said, "Look, we're not going to write this up, because this is just horrible. Why don't you fix this and let's take a look at the boat after you've fixed it." Well, that same manufacturer, who will go nameless, rebuilt the boat, and we had virtually the same experience the second time, and we had virtually the same experience on the third attempt. They were just really slapping together these boats in a very slipshod fashion. Well, we were still trying to get a boat, a decent boat to test, when the manufacturer went out of business. And of course, it's no wonder when you build a boat like that.

One of my other favorites, I had a boat arrive one time that we got ready to put in the water, and I said, "Oh, hold on a minute! Hold on a minute! Look! It doesn't have a drain plug." And the guy who had brought the boat over on a trailer said, "Oh my gosh, you're right! It doesn't have a drain plug, and I don't have one." So I got in the car. I drove to the marine-supply store. I bought a drain plug. I came back. I put the drain plug in. We put the boat in the water. Went and turned the key, nothing happened. Oh what's wrong? Okay, let me look in the battery compartment and make sure the battery switch is on. And I opened up the battery compartment, and wouldn't you know it, there's no battery! So I got back in the car. I drove back to the marine-supply store. I bought a battery. I took it back to the boat, installed it, attached everything, turned the key and the engine cranked, and cranked and cranked. It wouldn't start. Cranked and cranked and cranked, it wouldn't start. It's a brand-new boat with a brand-new motor. So I went back there and I squeezed the ball, and I squeeze it, and I squeeze it, and I squeeze it to try and get some fuel up to that motor, and the ball just would not get hard, as it should when it gets full of fuel. It wouldn't firm up. So I walked back to the guy and I said, "Is there any gas in this boat?" "Uh oh"¦ you're right, no gas." So then we pulled the boat out of the water, took it to the gas station, put a bunch of gas in it, put it back in the water. Finally got the boat started and did our boat test. And that was a boat test that was scheduled to run from, I don't know, maybe 7:00 or 8:00 in the morning until noon or 1:00, and we ended up finishing at dusk. Yeah, that was a fun one.

That's one of those "everything that could have gone wrong did go wrong" scenarios.

Rudow: Absolutely. Of course, there's been the flipside, too. I've had some wonderful boat tests where we've run boats all the way from Florida over to the Bahamas, and spent two or three days fishing in the Bahamas and then run them back. Certainly can't complain about a boat test like that. And again, there's long-term tests where I've run boats for an entire season. Boy, they're just a great way to get to know a boat. And when you write those up, you tend to have a whole lot to say. It really lets you dig deep into the boat, how it responds to all different kinds of sea conditions, all different kinds of loads, all different kinds of jobs. You know, it might be a fishing boat that we take the family out for a dinner cruise on, and you get to learn how well the different aspects of boating work for this particular boat.

Earlier, you touched on a couple of things that boat buyers can do if they're going to go out boat shopping, some of the skills that you use in boat testing. Why don't you just recap two or three of them really quick.

Rudow: Well, I'd say one of the most important things someone can do when they're looking at a boat is put their head and their eyes where the boat builder never expected you to. Most boats, when you jump on them and look around, unless it's a really cheap boat, the fit and finish is going to be pretty darn nice. Most of the builders have gotten to be pretty darn good at making a boat look good. When you put your head where the boat builder never expected you to look, it can be a whole different story. So bring a little flashlight with you when you're going to test a boat that you're thinking about buying. Stick your head inside of that anchor locker. Shine that light around, and you'll get to see things, like the hull-to-deck joint, that the builder really never expected you to see. You'll get to see how the wiring to the bow light is supported. Is it hanging down? Will you maybe catch your anchor float one day on those lines and rip them out? Things like this the builder didn't necessarily make perfect, because they don't expect you to look at it. With really good builders, you'll find that even in those compartments, things are still really done right, but a lot of times, it can expose some of the hidden problems with a boat.

Another real simple thing is just laying down on your back and looking up at the underside of the gunwale. A lot of boats run rigging there. A lot of boats are very unfinished there. A lot of boats, you can get a glimpse at that and see, did the builder use screws to secure the hull-to-deck joint, or did he use through-bolts? Is there a whole bunch of goop squirting out from the seams? Now you might think, "Ooh, bad, goop squirting out. We don't want that," but I love seeing goop squirting out between the seams, because that means they really gooped it up good. That means it's really going to be sealed all the way around the boat.