Operate boat while sitting down?

[SailingFan]

I got involved with the BBC series, "Top Gear" a few years back, and thoroughly enjoyed it most of the time. In one episode, two of the hosts were racing one another across the Riviera, one in a sports car and the other in a racing powerboat that had set some speed records. The boat had a hydraulic seating system because if you took the punishment it could deal out you would have died. The hydraulic buffers in the seats took incredible punishment that would have entered (and shattered) the mariner's spine. It was a heck of an episode, as the cameras in the boat showed that the host was battered tremendously, even with the restraints, and the seat. I was thoroughly impressed that the boat itself survived the pounding.

What ever happened to that series? I heard one of the hosts got in some sort of bother about something and was asked to leave, but did they just cancel the show, or did they instead drop it from the BBC feed to America, or..???

[GILow]

Originally Posted by SailingFan

What ever happened to that series? I heard one of the hosts got in some sort of bother about something and was asked to leave, but did they just cancel the show, or did they instead drop it from the BBC feed to America, or..???

The series got sillier and sillier, to the point of being embarrassing to watch.

Then Clarkson punched one of the support team because he didn't like his lunch at which point the BBC shut them down. I think they went to some other outfit, but I never bothered to find out where, I'd already given up on them years before.

[SailingFan]

Wait, when I say "involved" I don't mean I was working with them, I mean I was watching them on television consistently every day... Just to ensure no misunderstandings...

[SailingFan]

yes, they did get silly, but there were some danged nice cars and cool episodes, you surely must admit. Still, I can see that would be a problem!!

[GILow]

Originally Posted by SailingFan

yes, they did get silly, but there were some danged nice cars and cool episodes, you surely must admit. Still, I can see that would be a problem!!

Don't get me wrong, the early stuff was utterly brilliant. They turned the stupid car review genre on its head.

It took a few tries, it was not till they got the trio of Clarkson, Hammond and, finally, May that the chemistry really worked, and then it was terrific.

But somewhere, maybe after 5 seasons, it just got repetitive and pretty forced.

I saw only ONE car that I seriously lusted after in the whole series, and that was the Ariel Atom. The super cars leave me cold but that thing was a piece of engineering brilliance.

[SailingFan]

I used to laugh at the Cold War Era races... I also liked when they went on the track with Jackie Stewart and he showed them how to increase their lap times.

I liked some of the antiques, but I also was not a fan of the supercars. They were just too costly for my blood, and I could not seem to relate to those vehicles.

I liked the one where they converted a pickup, a car, and a bus into boats in the attempt to cross the English channel (and actually pulled it off with the pickup truck!).

(that last example was to keep us from getting entirely away from using boats)... They did sit down for part of those attempts to ford the Channel... of course, the other two vehicles sank!

[GILow]

Originally Posted by SailingFan

I liked the one where they converted a pickup, a car, and a bus into boats in the attempt to cross the English channel (and actually pulled it off with the pickup truck!).

Yes, and right there you could see the thing that was killing the show. Which was that Clarkson's supreme ego allowed only him to "win" any of the completely scripted competitions.

I have no problem with the scripted stuff itself, just the sadly predictable nature of the outcome.

Yeah, I know we are supposed to understand that it is scripted, and the "joke" was that Clarkson would always win, but it went deeper than that. The man was a terrible narcissist and it just started to dominate all they did.

Anyway, the car to boat conversion episode was a joke.

They didn't address which anchor to use, where to store the guns or how many flexible solar panels to install.

[SailingFan]

Ha Ha Ha!! Yes, you are entirely right! I did notice Clarkson's ego issue somewhere before that point, and that he was pretty narcissistic. I just assumed it was his personality type or that it fed into the script intentionally. I figured they were using it as a means to "guide" the script, really, to an intentional relationship between the players.