As we charge headlong into the second half of the 2010 season, sophisticated gadgets dripping from our every toggle, Tom Isitt thinks it’s time we stopped to appreciate just how much our boating world has changed in the last decade.

“Best of The Noughties? Hah! When I was a boy, all this was fields you know (waves in the general direction of Southampton Water). And now look.”

Yes, this was my ‘curmudgeonly old git’ response when the Editor suggested a nostalgic look back at the period of time between January 2000 and December 2009 - the Noughties, as they are known in the vernacular.

“Yes, yes,” insisted the Editor, eager to curate my memories of the past decade before the Alzheimer’s gets too firm a grip. “We want to know about the good, the bad and the ugly of the Noughties.”

“What, like Arsenal doing The Double in 2002?”

A small vein in the Editor’s temple starts to throb visibly. “Er, well, no. Not like that. I was thinking more along the lines of advances in boating technology, great boats that have been launched, people who have had an impact on our favourite pastime. That sort of thing.”

And thus it falls to me to celebrate with ill-advised vehemence some of the moments from the last ten years that have been particularly critical to our lives as UK boaters. I am fully prepared to take the brunt of whatever debate this ‘inspires’ and to quit my job should it all become too much.

The Millennium Bug was cobblers

It seems laughable now, but at the time there were genuine concerns that the Millennium Bug would bring the western world to a grinding halt as aeroplanes fell from the skies, computers shut down, power supplies collapsed, and TV stations were unable to broadcast Corrie. Financial institutions squandered millions (there’s a surprise) testing their systems for the dreaded Millennium Bug, and the whole world held its breath. In the boating world, there were concerns that GPS units might pack up or that the satellite signals might be lost, and that AIS would send supertankers smashing into each other in the Channel.

On the morning of 01 January, the world awoke with a thundering hangover, having completely forgotten about the Millennium Bug. It was only when we pitched up for work on 04 January and found our computers still functioning correctly that the depressing truth dawned on us. But at least our expensive GPS units still worked.

Volvo-Penta IPS was magic

Launched in 2005, Volvo’s IPS drive system promised the end of shaft-drives as we knew them. IPS is a kind of forward-facing sterndrive leg that pulls the boat through the water rather than pushing it. The system offers the efficiency of stern-drives, but with the ability to couple them to much more powerful engines. The system also allows boat designers to put the engines and drives pretty much wherever they want within the boat, saving space in the process.

Yes, the IPS system was expensive, and there were/are concerns about the way the legs were designed to sheer off if you hit anything solid with them, but overall the idea seemed like a good one. For some reason, however, it has been slow catching on. Despite the obvious advantages of fuel-savings and better manoeuvrability, the relatively high cost has put some people off. The boat designers, too, have been slow to reap the space-saving rewards offered by IPS and that is a very big shame.

LIBS moved to ExCeL

After five years with an ExCeL London Boat Show, the pain that was Earls Court has receded into distant memory, and we now look back at the place through rose-tinted specs. Ah happy days, eh? None of this DLR nonsense, none of this Tower Gateway malarkey. Just the bright lights and welcoming transsexuals of Earls Court. From a personal point of view, ExCeL lacks the charm and rather unquantifiable ‘something’ that boat shows at Earls Court had, but it also lacks the peculiar ability of the old show to make us all ill.

No. Rose tints aside, Earls Court was not a suitable venue for a boat show as boats got progressively larger. The move to ExCeL was probably a good idea, but LIBS has become less of an event and more of an exhibition. The frisson of excitement you used to get walking into Earls Court has gone and, although the facilities at ExCeL are infinitely better, it just doesn’t have the same debauch-factor. Happily this year, the organisers are addressing this by proactively seeking input from industry members. We look forward to seeing what comes of it all . . .

Joysticks made us look good

Oh yes, parking by joystick. If ever there was a system designed specifically for me, this is it. Be it the IPS system, the MerCruiser Axius system, or the CMD Zeus system, all are a God-send to those of us who aren’t very good at parking. My excuse is that I never park the same boat twice, or have more than a couple of hours at the helm in which to get used to its parking characteristics, but deep down I suspect that it’s something to do with my lack of spatial awareness and my innate ability to break stuff.

Anyway, joystick controls for mooring are brilliant. Move the stick in the direction you want the boat to go and it does it. This is counter-intuitive for most boaters, who are used to their boats going in almost any direction except the one they intend, but you soon get the hang of it and wonder how you managed the old way.

Personal watercraft took steroids

Not so long ago, there was a notion that personal watercraft were annoying little things ridden far too close to sailing boats in Poole Harbour by people with little regard for seamanship and a powerful need to be seen and heard. For the rest of us they were fun little sit-on things you hired off the beach on holiday in Spain. One that wasn’t too knackered might do 35mph and put out 50hp, but it wasn’t going to scare you. Now I get sweaty palms and a dry mouth when I consider the latest 250hp, 75mph versions you can buy for the price of a cheap secondhand hatchback. Throughout the Noughties, PWs have progressed from ‘Tee-hee’ to ‘Whoooa!’ to ‘Ooooh sheeeeeeeeet!!!!’ These things are brutally fast, immensely powerful, and physically very demanding to ride. I love them - and anyone who likes speed and water should love them too. If you doubt any of this, just try one and then perhaps we can talk again . . .

Red diesel got appropriately pricey

For many years in this country we had the rather odd situation where ordinary people paid £1 per litre to feed their small, inexpensive boats with petrol, while very, very rich people (and farmers) paid 30p per litre to feed their large, expensive boats (and tractors) with diesel. Interestingly, cheap fuel for millionaires was deemed to be entirely fair and reasonable by the marine industry. And while the RYA tried valiantly to preserve those prices for us all, they were swimming against an inevitable tide of common sense.

Yes, the Eurocrats got rid of cheap diesel for recreational boaters and there was uproar. Seriously, there was. Even though the abolition of red diesel had long since been approved by Brussels, stupid rich people all over Britain demanded their right to burn fossil fuels at an obscene rate. In 2004 there was even talk of blockades and on-water demonstrations, with these same stupid rich people failing to grasp how the man in the street would perceive a bunch of millionaires parading up and down the Thames outside parliament in their very expensive boats demanding cheap fuel.

And yet we still have red diesel because you can claim that the 400 gallons a week you use in your Fairline Squadron is all consumed by the heating system (millionaires do feel the cold you know). Hurrah and trebles all round!

Mobile phones went mental

At the beginning of the Noughties mobile phones were rubbish. Sure, they made and received phone calls, and there was some bizarre new thing they did called SMS which no one over the age of 20 really understood or knew how to do. But generally they were just phones.

Back then, if anyone had told you that you could have a handheld colour chartplotter/GPS for £15 you would have told them not to be so bloody silly. But now we have BlackBerrys and iPhones and Apps - and the Navionics App for the iPhone (which covers the UK and offers all the features you need from a basic plotter) is absolutely astounding value. Okay, so the screen size isn’t ideal, but hey, this is a £15 colour plotter that works well.

And it’s not just the plotter. There are numerous boating Apps, from weather forecasts to animated knot-tying Apps to tides Apps. There’s even a celestial navigation App for the slightly confused (surely celestial navigation is all about doing things the old way, so why would a luddite be using an iPhone?). Anyway, the kind of essential boating information that used to take a lot of effort to assemble (weather, tides and charts) can now be viewed on your iPhone (or BlackBerry or Nokia) in an instant and with virtually no financial outlay. I think we all need to take a minute to recognise just how astonishingly wonderful that is . . .

People we have loved
Steve Curtis MBE (pictured): seven-times Class 1 Champion, thoroughly nice bloke and persistent legend
Norman Fletcher: the man who launched Fletcher in 1964 and who sadly died in 2008
Tilly Antonelli: main man at Pershing and a visionary, who took big sports-cruisers to new heights of cool and sophistication
Shelly Jory: top bird, hugely successful racer (F4S and P1) and a great ambassador for the sport
Tom Isitt: the Don Aronow of boating journalism, whose fall from grace been extraordinarily swift and entirely deserved
Chris Neville-Parry: loveable curmudgeon and backbone of Sowester, latterly of the Personal Watercraft Partnership, who sadly died as the Noughties drew to a close.

Outboards grew up

Another product that saw enormous strides forward during the Noughties was the outboard engine. We said goodbye to noisy, rattly two-strokes and hello to smooth, quiet four-strokes. Tougher emissions regulations around the world meant that the outboard manufacturers were forced to either abandon two-strokes or switch to clean-burn, direct-injection techniques in order to get their products sanctioned.

Reliability also became a big issue, with a more discerning and sophisticated customer base demanding the sort of longevity, customer service and warranty cover that they got from their car dealer - a not unreasonable expectation when stumping up £10,000 (or considerably more) for a mid to high-end outboard. Features such as Winterisation Mode and long service intervals make them much more customer-friendly than they used to be, and ease of ownership is now considered at least as important as outright power and speed. The outboard, it seems, is all grown up. Naturally though, all of this comes at a price . . .

RIBs finally cottoned on

The Noughties was definitely the decade of the RIB. Ten years ago, RIBs tended to be practical objects, helmed by beardy men in woolly hats who liked the fact that their boats looked like they had fallen off an oil-rig. They were usually equipped with ancient two-stroke Evinrudes or rattly old Selvas, had a jockey-seat or two and not much else.

throughout the Noughties people came to appreciate the ruggedness and go-anywhere abilities of this breed of boat. RIB builders, in turn, realised that the new breed of RIBsters wanted a boat that was a bit more civilised than those of old, so we began to see bench seats, sun-pads, stern-drives and even cuddies with toilets.

RIBs got bigger, too. A decade ago, a seven-metre RIB was considered pretty large, but now ten-metre RIBs are perfectly commonplace and it’s the 25-metre RIBs that stop us in our tracks. Things like the Heaven 80 and FB80 Record have proper facilities like bathrooms and cabins with double beds. They also cost hundreds of thousands of pounds but that’s all good, because the upshot is that today’s RIBs are by and large excellent, with leisure RIBs offering sophistication and comfort, as well as endless amounts of four-season fun.

Boats we have loved
Hydrolift 24: beautifully built, staggeringly fast, very capable and massively pricey.
Pershing 88: one of the greatest (and coolest) sports cruisers ever made. Utterly, utterly, utterly desirable. It makes my heart ache just thinking about it.
BladeRunner: great looks, great performance and uniquely stylish.
WallyPower 118: stealth looks - check. Gas-turbine engine - check. Multi-million pound price-tag - check. 118 feet long with 60-knot ability - check. Amazing.
Sunseeker XS2000: Proof that Sunseeker still cares about naughty little boats.
FB55: mentalist RIB extraordinaire, with four 420hp diesels on surface-drives and 99 knots without breaking a sweat.