Cattailspa wrote:
Just a little advice on your docking practice. Just do everything slow. Do not be in a hurry to get her in the slip. Just move the controls a little and wait for it. And make sure your wheel is centered. Then just use your motors. And have fun
I always dislike the 'go slow' advice. Usually because it doesn't take into account that some hulls really do not handle well at dead slow speeds. I find our 348 is MUCH more maneuverable when given a little bit more than just 'in gear' speed. Not much more, perhaps the difference between 3.5mph and 4.5mph. You wouldn't think it'd matter that much but it does. The boat tends to start wandering when going "too slow" down the fairway between slips. Giving it a bit more power helps keep it tracking properly. So if you find the boat tending to wander a bit off a straight path try using just a little more power.
As for maneuvering into the slip, yeah, that's definitely a time to be going slow. This is one area where big motions or lots of power are often not a friend (to your boat, your neighbor's boat, you wallet...) There's no shame in using the rub rails to help pivot the boat against a piling. Bear in mind they're 'rub' rails, not 'bang-into' rails, so make sure to use them just for smooth, slow contact.
What you really want to be looking for is 'point of no return' spots. As you get to know the boat you'll start to learn how readily you can maneuver to get out of problem situations. You learn just how much room the boat needs to turn, or distance to stop. Once you have a feel for that you can keep yourself a step or two ahead of when the boat gets into trouble spots. As in, you wander too close to a seawall and don't have enough room to swing the stern about. I had that happen once, got pushed by the wind up against the seawall of the marina and couldn't easily get off of it. Fortunately a fellow slip holder tossed me a line from the other side the fairway and we used that to pull the stern over. I couldn't easily get out of that situation because there was no place to tie up a line on the wall. What that experience taught me was to NOT let the boat start getting into that situation. Prevent the boat from getting past the point of no (easy) return.
As for engine-only maneuvering, that's good advice for inboards. For I/O's you do have the benefit of being able to actually get steerable thrust in reverse. But it's tricky set of vectoring angles trying to remember just where the props are pointing. For inboards it does next to no good to turn the rudders when in reverse as the prop wash is going the wrong way. That and when you change back into forward gear you might not remember about the rudders. When you keep the rudders/outdrives in dead-center position you take those added angles out of the equation. You can just get used to how the engines push/pull the boat. But once you know what you're doing it's handy to be able to use outdrive reverse to pull the stern over in that direction.
So get a feel for how your boat tracks along at a slow speed. Then see how it tracks with just a little more throttle. For me it made all the difference between hair-raising trips down the fairway and docking efforts guest compliment me about.
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