Peter B wrote:
If you have one [bopw trhuster] you will use it, but gain less skill handling the boat - if you don't have one, you manage without, it's that simple.
This is a hot topic on all boating forums.* Should you get a bow thruster or tough it out and learn to operate without one.* As I said earlier, you can accomplish anything with a single that you can accomplish with a twin.* The techniques can be different but the end result will be the same.* But like everything, maneuvering a twin or a single takes practice.* The more you operate the boat under varying conditions the more you will learn, a process that never stops by the way since there will always be the situation you haven't encountered yet.
If you operated your single-engine boat a lot under many conditions--- like the fishing skippers and tug skippers--- you will get real good at putting a single-engine boat anywhere you want it.** (And fishing boats and tugs are made to be whacked up against docks and piers--- they aren't real worried about the brightwork and wax job on these things.)
But most of us recreational boaters don't really run our boats all that much.* Certainly not compared to a commercial skipper.* Having a bow thruster can be a real boon to a skipper who simply doesn't have the boat handling time and a vast number of docking and wind and current situations under his belt, which tends to be most of us.
We chartered a single-engine GB36 before buying our own boat.* It had a bow thruster and that thruster was the only thing in a few instances that prevented us from damaging the boat.* Has I been a much more experienced boat handler at the time, I might not have needed the thruster.* But given my abilities and the situations we were in, the thruster was an obvious "fix" for the problem, it was easy to use and understand, and it required no practice to "get it right."
The most common argument against thrusters is that when it quits you won't know how to maneuver the boat without it.* But you can make the same statement about a twin engine boat.* If you have to shut down an engine, you have a single engine boat with asymetrical thrust.* It can be a real bear to dock or close-maneuver a twin with only one engine running.* I've had to do it a couple of times, and it was not easy.* Harder than maneuvering a single-engine boat, I can tell you that.* But what twin owner practices close-in maneuvering on one engine?* There might be a few but I daresay most of us never do this.* We depend on those two engines running, which I don't see being any different than the single-engine owner depending on his bow thruster running.
I've noticed that most people who point out the downside of relying on a bow thruster don't have one.* So far as I can recall, I have never heard a boater who has one say they wish they didn't.* A sensible approach in my opinion is what our boating friend Carey does with his single-engine lobsterboat.* It has a thruster, but he rarely uses it.* He is one of the best boat handlers I know, and he has learned how to handle his boat without the thruster.* But..... on those occasions where a shot of thruster will make his life a whole lot easier, or prevent whacking into something, he uses it.
It's sort of like a mobile phone.* You can live your life successfully without one but now that they've been invented it can make a lot of situations a whole lot easier to deal with, so why not take advantage of the technology?
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