I absolutely agree, ref docking. Lots of reasons, including reach. That said, she's unenthused. She can and sometimes will dock the boat... but I've not yet been able to talk her into doing that all that time. Or even most of the time.
Ref holding tank... can't think of any way to entice her to be the bubba at the pump-out fitting. She's quite happy to be below confirming the tank gauge eventually says empty, adding some rinse water, etc.
-Chris
Chris,
Agreed, enticing her to be bubba probably won't work....
But putting her at the helm does more often work fine. Here's a few thoughts for starters:
First, get a headset, and a remote thruster(s) control. That's what I have.
Establish communication protocol.
For some of the communications we use:
One reverse, means put the power into reverse for a "one thousand one" or one full second in reverse and then back to idle.
Two reverse, means two seconds, etc.
One reverse plus, means one second in reverse with a small goose, rpm goes up to 1200 instead of 600.
One wheel port means turn the wheel to the port one turn.
etc. etc.
We practiced those so it became second nature to respond to each other and both knew what the boat would do.
For the most part, I'd position the boat prior to backing in or bowing in, then give her the helm.
We would ALWAYS brief the docking or locking, with a back up if it didn't work. Locking was always dirt simple and worked really well from either side.
Overtime, she developed the skill to tell when something needed to be done before I said anything, but she would say, I'm giving you one forward, or one bow thrust to port, and in some cases she didn't have to say a thing.
The most difficult was backing in against a wind, and occasionally it just couldn't be done (we couldn't do it), so plan B... fortunately rare.
We have a stern thruster so I would be in the cockpit and could tweak the stern over a matter of inches as we backed in and it often worked perfect.
We became good enough that we could do it without major damage or loss of a crew member.
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As a side note, I'm teaching my neighbor and his wife how to operate their 35ft twin IO, with thruster. The guy is a 40year Navy vet and his wife does a better job with the boat. Seems like women just have a finesse that us guys don't have, especially with tight maneuvering and docking. Not a generalization, but an observation I've seen many times. Often the wife never gets the chance. They are actually pretty good and occasionally worth keeping.