I mentioned my discovery of the Knotstick (www.knotstick.com) in a previous blog entry. Well it turned up in the mail last week and I was able to test it out this weekend just gone.

Have to say it's a very neat piece of kit. Very well put together, dead easy to set up and use. No calibration and it appears to be very accurate. The way it works with the elasticated tow chord means that the scale is dampened so that you get a very steady reading.

My log impeller was stuck again almost all weekend, only finally freeing up as we approached Poole Harbour on the return trip. So it read zero knots almost all weekend. Useless. The knotstick by comparison was easy to tie to the rail and throw over the side and we could glance at it now and then to gauge performance.

The only issue we experienced was while in the Solent when we kept catching small clumps of hairy red seaweed. Out at sea this never happened. No biggy as it is easy to pull in and remove the weed.

I had imagined only using this as backup or for longer passages but I can see myself using this on short day sails too.

Nice, simple, lightweight bit of kit, which you could use on a dinghy too.

And it cost only £55 shipped from the USA with a spare trolling unit. No brainer.