The new Prestige 680…. strong competition for the Princess 68!

[Nigelpickin]

Sorry Mapster but just because I have ABS, traction control and robotic gear shift of my car, it doesn't mean that I lack the confidence or skill to drive. Crikey, I even have electronic steering, reversing camera and auto just about everything. I have a Joystick on my boat but I often steer at close quarters using the fly by wire throttle. Perhaps having fly by wire makes me a heretic?

Point me toward the POD fatality stats and I'll have a look with interest but from my line of sight, sitting on the hammerhead or reading near miss reports, the causals in terms of accidents are lack of legislation, lack of training, lack of planning, lack of maintenance but not lack of screws and rudder.

Feel the love for PODs and be glad that there are manafactures driving advances in marine technology.

I'll see you on the water, (as long as my softwear doesn't lock up, in which case I'll wave from the pontoon)

 

[MapisM]

Yeah NP, can't argue with all that. In fact, I kinda saw some objections like yours coming, already while writing my previous post.
Let me try to better explain what I meant.

In my (very own and personal) experience, this is what happens in real life:
1) most boaters have their first experience with smallish boats, more than likely o/b powered. And all of them (bar none, and I'm including myself!) at the beginning struggle with the fact that the boat does not react as a car, when steering.
2) a few of these folks just give up after that first experience (A). Some others are not interested in boating enough to invest time and patience to acquire some proper boat handling skills, but they simply accept to live with the crazy behavior of boats because all they are interested in is some occasional boat rental to make a lake tour or something like that, obviously in glorious weather (B). And then there are folks who like boating (and cruising!) enough to learn all that has to be learned to go at sea by boat (C). Among which, mooring is neither the most difficult nor the most dangerous part - as I'm sure anyone who has been out there in hairy conditions would agree.

Now, it's pretty obvious that the joystick trick is meant to appeal to A and B boaters, in order to sell more big(ish) boats to people who normally wouldn't buy one.
Which is fair enough - after all, Steve Jobs made a fortune out of inventing products for solving problems that people didn't even think to have.

BUT, and it's a very big but, among the A and B boaters I met that moved to bigger boats ONLY because they bought the idea that the joystick could solve their one and only problem with boats - i.e. mooring in crosswind, in front of a crowd of boys ready to put on youtube their mistakes - well, none of them even considered bothering with learning anything else than maneuvering the joystick.
And all I'm saying is, there's much more than that to safe boating.

Of course, this doesn't mean that you are one of those who chose an IPS boat because of the joystick trick alone. Or that you lack the confidence or skill to drive.
Otoh, if you have the confidence and skills to drive, would you even consider using some park assistance system for reversing in a parallel park?
That's in fact the best comparison with pods and joysticks, because all the other gizmos that you mention have (albeit to different degrees) their usefulness.
Park assist systems are instead designed with just one goal in mind: making some drivers who can't actually drive believe that they can.
In other words, another solution to a problem that doesn't exist (leaving aside the builders' problem of selling more cars, obviously).
And if you want to convince me that there are excellent drivers around, who can handle each and every road conditions with any vehicle, but just can't handle parallel parking, well, don't even start.
I'm more than happy to agree to disagree!

PS: Mapster? Wazzat?

 

[Nigelpickin]

'And if you want to convince me that there are excellent drivers around, who can handle each and every road conditions with any vehicle, but just can't handle parallel parking, well, don't even start.'

You've obviously not met my wife

FWIW, if there are people around that have upsized and moved to vectoring systems only because they don't fancy learning to handle prevailing conditions with tradional skill then we don't need to agree to disagree, they will be let down by the system one day and they will probably end up trending, deservedly. I just fail to see how a joystick fail differs from autopilot fail, bow thruster fail, throttle fail, which all seem to be far more common but which don't seem evoke the response that we see in this post, which FWIW was not even that's focussed on drive systems.

Next time someone tells of their autopilot locking up and putting them on a Cardinal or a thruster control sticks or a boat surges unexpectedly I will watch responses with interest.....

Tech will always fail, part of the fun to be had with boating is learning the redundancies and survival skills required in worst case scenarios..

Mapster was a typo caused in the main by me having auto check/correct turned off on my keyboard as I see these aids to cominication as unnecessary and whimsical fads designed for fair weather scribes.

 

[Sishoe]

My current boat (Bavaria 420 Virtess IPS600) i brought as the offer was too good to be true and the dealer took care of my old Gobbi 425. I must admit i was looking forward to using the joystick, not because i could'nt moor on stern drives (had lessons from Medez Marine and had it down to a T) but i would have more confidence in windy conditions and therefore more likely to use the boat.
I've been boating for 3 years this summer and this is my 3rd boat. I dont think im in it for a long time but certainly a good time. i have neither the time or the size of family to spend years cutting my teeth on small boats. 40 something ft works for us and if i can have a few mod cons to make my boating life a little less stressful, why not.
The industry in general needs new people coming in and buying boats, maybe IPS was developed to try and increase the appeal of boating to outsiders, and was never designed for the boating lifers.
My old man could never understand why car manufacturers started fitting parking sensors, he'd never reversed into anything, so when we got a car with a reversing camera he thought the world had gone mad.
Going way back to the original thread, I'd have the Prestige over the Princess, if i was lucky enough to be in the position of choice, for a varity of reasons one being its on IPS.

 

[Nautical]

Without getting into a heated debate whether PODS allow boat owners afloat that are less than skilled and should give up boating, I think that is a red herring. To suggest that anyone who can't dock a boat without a pod / joystick system should give up boating is very unfair. i have seen as all of us have people on shafts, outdrives and outboard make a complete hash of berthing, hitting everything in sight, should they all be told to go home and not bother with boating? Boating is a learning curve, we all made a complete mess of berthing as we went through the process of learning, some of us still do on occasion, slight lack of concentration, didn't quite judge it right, haven't skippered for over a year or just lost the "touch" momentarily . Pods / joystick take a lot of that worry away, doesn't mean in the slightest we are unsafe boaters.

I have demo'd a 39' outdrive to an owner, could not for the life of him get the hang of it berthing side too, "not for me thanks", then tried him on a 47' on pods , fantastic, easy peasy , I ll have it!. Chap is probably one of the most cautious and safe fellows afloat, he just has a block when it comes to berthing and gets flustered, the whole time he is out there was only one thing on his mind ruining his day out, berthing when he came back in. Now happy camper, been afloat on that 47 for five years, safe as houses not a dink, scratch or cock up an not so much as a sticky plaster needed on board and he has been on several 2 day passages got there safe, spot on nav and well prepared should the worst happen.

As far as pods are just a sales tool to flog it to builders because its a cheaper install, I would partly agree, it is a faster install but it is not cheaper, the pods are more expensive to buy than trad boxes and shafts, you save time but you pay more for the units. More importantly though it does without doubt reduce vibration and noise, so if the builder can get the set up right and the hull specifically designed for pods there is a definite upside for the customer over shafts if noise and vibration are a another priority as well as ease of berthing. Secondly you can not argue pods give more flexibility on layout, whether you think that just a side issue fair enough but for some the extra space is a boon when they have a larger family and need that extra pair of bunks or crew space or what ever the configuration gives them.

So, it is up to people to choose what system best suits them, if they choose pods that is an excellent choice as would be shafts if they have weighed up the pros and cons of both, far too often we are swayed by others opinion because we believe their advice must be right because, hey! they have been around for years and talk with such conviction.

 

[MapisM]

As far as pods are just a sales tool to flog it to builders because its a cheaper install, I would partly agree, it is a faster install but it is not cheaper, the pods are more expensive to buy than trad boxes and shafts, you save time but you pay more for the units.

Just to get facts straight, that's not what I've been told by a couple of builders with a fairly high experience on IPS, T - one of which you've represented in the UK in the past, btw.
You must consider the whole power package for a fair comparison, and as I'm sure you know, one technical advantage that pods indeed have vs. shafts is that, for any given hull, the power (and most importantly, torque) required is a bit lower.
The final result between the higher transmission cost and the lower engine costs being just about a wash - and on top of that, there are VP discount policies to builders on IPS systems, but let's not go there. That still leaves the builder with a faster installation, and one demanding less skilled workers, incidentally.

Now, back to the water-cooler debate on IPS, if you think it's unfair to suggest that anyone who can't dock a boat without a joystick should give up boating, how fair do you think it is to suggest that these very same folks are stupid enough to be swayed by some posts written by T-rex forumites?