Last time I left the dock and suddenly had little control of the transmissions led to a quick safety discussion with my wife and her choice of places to put her hat.
One of my projects this last winter/spring was pulling all my ancient control cables and controls out and replacing with Glendinning electronic controls. This allowed me to “easily” add another control station at the transom, which is a potential big help when single handing.
At some point I’ll take some pictures and maybe do a write up, which I’m typically tardy in doing.
They, like any change in learned brain stem actions, take a little time to re-train your automatic non thinking actions. First time out I went to the fuel dock, stopped and kept going in reverse because it “felt” like neutral, but I was one detent off. It’s hard to take the time to really slow down and look at the indicators when your brain wants to go at normal, don’t think about it speed. Mostly past that phase now.
There is also a bit of a “immediate feedback” gap. With the old controls, the mere force and the clunk of throwing the transmission levers tells your brain that you are in gear, well before you notice the boat moving differently. The effortless move from one detent to the next, does not yet tell my brain that I have shifted and at first you feel like nothing happened (yet I can show you the shifting is easily as fast at the transmission). So pulling out of my slip when the current is running, really felt awkward at first. There was a big tendency to want to “do something” and you start to focus on that thought instead of reading current, etc…. If you can, start slowly and don’t jump straight into more advanced maneuvers as your immediate brain calibration session.
All in all, there was more getting used to them than I had guessed. Also, I love them. They are much easier/quicker to do some low throttle shifts that I might not have previously taken the time to do.
The transom station (handheld wired remote) is a kick. Everything feels weird, because I have no calibration of what the boat looks/feels like when operating next to the swim step. It’s weird. I can also,operate it from the sun deck, where I am close but elevated and have a slightly more birds eye view. That made for a really nice landing where I could both see and talk with low voices to a line handler standing next to me on the dock.
It’s all different, but I like it.
If you do,this project, think about how you will guarantee, absolutely guarantee good voltage to the units. It’s their Achilles heel.
