www.iFourWinns.com

Hi everyone,
Just wanted to introduce myself. I am from the Boston area and just bought a 2002 Four WInns 348. I pick it up next Saturday and looking forward to enjoying the rest of the summer on it. If anyone is around this area, I am docked at the Hingham Shipyard Marina. I have been reading this site for about 2 weeks after I found the boat and waiting for marine survey and sea trial. Everything is great and we are ready to roll. I am sure I will have lots of questions and plan to help in any way I can to my fellow boaters.
Look forward to talking with you all.

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2002 348 Vista

Congrats on Your new Vessel Hope everything goes well..........

Thank You appreciate it, very excited.

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2002 348 Vista

Welcome! Now....let's see some pics!

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Current Boat:
2004 Sea Ray 320 Sundancer "Nauti Luvin'"

Previous Boats:
1999 298 Vista "Seas The Day"
2008 H200SS "Nauti Luv"
2006 Tahoe Q4

Welcome aboard!

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-Bill Kearney, 2005 348 Vista

I have to figure out how to post pics on here. Will post some when I have some time to figure it out. Thanks for the replies guys!

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2002 348 Vista

I cant seem to post pics here. I looked at the FAQ page and I guess I have to send a email to the administrator if I want to have that option. I will post some pics here soon once I have the permission.
I am picking up the boat on Saturday in Hyannis and taking it to my slip in the Hingham Shipyard. If any one is out and about, come on over and say hello, I could use all the help I could get! lol

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2002 348 Vista

Great! Another New England 348 owner, welcome.

Here is a couple pointers, the Vista 348, 358 and the current 375 are the same boat. There are minor variations over the years but a lot in common. We have a lot of threads on here about that model.

You usually can't post pictures here. You post your pictures on a free photo site somewhere else and post a link here.

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2008 V358 Two-tone Blue V/P Dual Prop 320 HP
Lake Winnipesaukee, NH

Correct. Contacting an administrator for permission would be futile. There is no iFourWinns photo site to host pictures.. Just host your pictures on Photobucket, Flickr or countless others, then link the picture to this site.

Read this Photo posting tutorial, it will guide you through the process, which is very simple.
viewtopic.php?f=9&t=1877

Welcome, and congrats on your new to you boat.

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One of 4 Previous (Sold) Boats:
2000 Four Winns 268 Vista

Current Boat: 2004 Chaparral 235 ssi cuddy

Thanks guys, appreciate the advice. I will post them to photo bucket and send a link out. Look forward to talking with all of you and helping in any way i can. Picking the boat up in Hyannis on Saturday morning for its first voyage to Hingham! Should be a fun trip. Figuring it will take about 5 hours? Going through Woods Hole, through the canal and up the coast. Since I am not familiar with the boat and only have operated single engine boats the past 15 years, I am hiring a captain for the day to bring it back up with me. I feel it is worth it for 250 bucks and he can show me the ins and outs of the proper steering with the twin screws, docking etc.
As much as I dont like the thought of it, I feel that this is my best interest if I am going to have my family on the boat the rest of the summer. Better safe than sorry and I can put my ego aside and make it fun and most important safe!

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2002 348 Vista

Hello!!!!!!!!!!

I bought my boat in Hingham, from 3A Marine. They are great to deal with! I have a V258 & have a slip at the Winthrop Yacht Club. We go to Grape, Bimkin & Peddocks Islands all the time. We also anchor at Lovells & Worlds End too.

I have always wanted to go though the canel!!! I have been told, by many boats who have, that you MUST go though with the tide. If you don't you will burn a lot more fuel and since your fighting the current, and it make it harder to steer.

Good luck with the new boat!

You're dead-on right about hiring someone to give you some hands-on time with the boat. I had a friend (Jim Maier from BOE Marine) spend an afternoon with me. It was well worth it to get a better feeling for docking.

Two things come to mind regarding docking the 348, wind and momentum.

When boats have a higher hull profile (freeboard in nautical parlance) the wind can push you around a lot. The side of the hull acts like a sail. Knowing this is important. I eye up the dock area, looking for any flags, pennants or burgees. Those tell me the wind direction and strength. Knowing this helps me plan for the wind interfering with docking. As in, if the wind is coming hard or gusting from the port side that tells me to hug closer to that side when maneuvering. Better to be close the wind in case it pushes you to away.

Currents can also be an issue, but around here on the Chesapeake they're not much of an issue, so I don't have a lot of advice to offer. It's just like the wind, know that it's there and take it into account ahead of time.

Momentum is the next thing, get to know how much motion it takes to get the boat to stay on track, and when to get ready to make changes.

I found going too slow is a BIG problem with the 348's hull. When going too slow the boat gets pushed around by winds and currents too much. It doesn't have much of a keel so there's nothing under the water to counteract sideways forces. Bumping the speed up from dead slow to about 3-4 mph GREATLY improves how the hull tracks straight. Remember, you can use those engines in reverse to counteract forward motion (note, I didn't say "stop").

Next is understanding when allowing motion in a given direction is going to make it hard to get out of trouble. As in, you let the boat move too far over and no longer have enough room to pivot the boat away from problems. It's far better to use a healthy burst of power in reverse to pull the boat back to a more maneuverable position instead of getting wedged against a seawall or other boats. There's no shame in 'resetting' your approach. It's far better to waste some time re-doing an approach rather than paying someone to fix broken fiberglass (yours or someone else's).

You eventually get a feel for when the boat is going to get pushed past a point of reasonable control. It greatly eases the process of docking to think a step or two ahead to avoid getting past this point. Know when things will get too squirrelly to overcome and stay one step back from there.

Rub rails are there for a reason. You can rest the boat against a piling and use that as a pivot point to bring the boat around. Just avoid bumping into them directly. It's still fiberglass under the rub rail and if you hit something too hard it's going to cause cracks. Better to ease up to a piling and slide your way against it. It's always nice to be able to making a docking without touching anything, but don't obsess about it.

And NEVER, EVER let people get themselves between your boat and the docks. The boat weighs EIGHT TONS and will crush an arm or leg very easily. I tell passengers, you're meat and the boat or docks will mash you if you get between them. Your two engines will allow you to do EVERYTHING necessary to dock completely without anyone's manual labor. A passenger pulling or pushing on something can often make docking WORSE. Let your engines do all the work.

There are some more advanced techniques that can be used with twin engines. Like being able to 'walk' a boat sideways. Truth be told they're not maneuvers you're going to learn easily, nor will you ever really be able to use them on a regular basis. So unless you have a boat with computer-controlled joystick docking features it's not going to happen. Save your time for having fun, not freaking out about docking.

My most useful tip for docking involves using a bow line when visiting the fuel dock. Nose your way toward the dock and get a line tied down at the bow to the dock. With the bow secured you can then use the boat's 'pivoting' action to drag the stern back in to the dock. When you tie down the bow you're taking away the boat's ability to pivot around, this redirects the motion to force the stern over. Works great, every time. Once you understand how your boat pivots (one engine in forward, the other in reverse) you'll grasp how this maneuver works.

There's more to learn and I'm sure others can chime in with advice.

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-Bill Kearney, 2005 348 Vista

WOW - What great advice from Bill. Keep in mind, I only have one engine.

I have never seen any one use the pilings. But at the club, I have seen these 2 engine boaters come in, about 5 to 6 feet from the dock or slip and make that boat go MORE side ways than forward or reverse. Doing all this at a crawl. Me, am just entering the slip at 2 or 3 knots than hit forward slow the boat down when backing into the slip. At times I want 2 engines and at times I don't!!

Thank you for the advice Bill, that really helps. I have had a Baja boat for a while with a single engine and had the docking of that down to a tee with even the wind and the current conditions so I am thinking with the twin inboard engines, it should be easier from what I have read and who I have talked to. I appreciate your input on this, I like the thought of the fuel fill up idea, good advise. One thing that makes my docking easy is that my slip is the first one on the end of the pier, so I dont have to go down to the middle or the end and try to get the boat in there. But I know the circumstance will arise where I am somewhere and I need to fit into a tight space and I want to be able to do that without any problems. I will be playing with the boat this weekend and witht he help of a captain that has been doing this for over 25 years, I hope to have some reassurance I can do this.
Thank you Bill and Paul for the advice, I hope to give you some updates here soon as to how I am doing with this beast that I just bought!

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2002 348 Vista

Another tip is to always give a loop end of the line to someone on shore. Better to have the do NOTHING other than drape it around a piling and have your own crew deal with the bitter end (the actual nautical term for the end of a line).

But at your own dock I prefer to use the loop at the boat, at least for the stern lines. Doing this means never having to guess about how to adjust them. Get the lines adjusted at the pilings and then you're set. I'd do this up at the bow too but it's a lot harder to get things adjusted as well from there. For those lines I just wrap some electrical or silicone 'rescue' tape at the point where the line sits right up over the edge of the gunwale. This gives you a quick visual cue as to where the lines are supposed to go. You may already know that tip, but just thought I'd share.

With the twin inboards the pivot point is right under where the windshield meets the deck. This is just about the center of the boat length. This means you can pivot the boat around inside it's own length. Stern drives tend to have their pivot a bit farther back. This central pivot point is VERY handy for getting in and out of our slip. The fairway between docks is only about a foot wider than our total length. So I have to do a good job of pivoting the boat and the inboards make this a snap. When I come back to port I go past the slip and then back into it. This sometimes means bringing the port stern quarter up against the port bow piling of our slip and using that to slide around into the slip. But that's usually only necessary when there's gusting or strong wind coming in off the starboard side, which isn't often, thankfully. By backing into the slip a bit at an angle this also reduces the total length sticking out into the fairway, leaving me more room to swing the bow around and back into the slip.

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-Bill Kearney, 2005 348 Vista