Trade-A-Boat — February 2018

The AGB roadshow rolled back to the chilly

waters of Victoria for 2015, but this time to pretty

Lakes Entrance in East Gippsland. The locals

heard us coming and welcomed us with open

arms and fresh seafood (yep, it’s a tough job

sometimes!)

The big change for 2015 was the introduction

of independent industry judges. For years

we’d relied on pulling together the full team,

including our New Zealand-based Trade-a-Boat

journos, but for 2015 new editor Tim van Duyl

thought it might be a good idea to get some

fresh eyes involved in the process. To this day,

neither he nor anyone around him knows how

we managed to score fishing royalty Peter Pakula

and local waterways authority David Talko-

Nicholas. Maybe it was the fresh seafood...

Regardless, the new kids on the block did well,

following the scoring template and imparting

their personal experience to the job.What

was most interesting, was how similar their

thoughts were to AGB ‘veteran’ judges John

Ford and Kevin Smith – could just be that real

quality remains evident? When it was all over,

the Sailfish S7 had monstered the competition,

pulling in an impressive 87.2/100, with young-

gun Jack Murphy appreciating the “immaculate

design and layout”. On the Haines Hunter,

David loved how “everything is there, it all

functions beautifully and is rock-solid quality.”

2015

WINNER

100 trade aboat.com.au

Sailfish came close in 2014 with its Canyon Master. So, for

2015 the team listened, they made changes and came to

the party with a rig built to win. And win they did.