Marin wrote:
I don't know of a thread on it but they have come up from time to time. We are not in the position to buy a boat with pod drives but if we were we would get one (a GB41) in a heartbeat. The ability to hold station regardless of the wind or current using the pod control computer and GPS is fabulous in my opinion. The ability to drive the boat sideways or at any angle needed into or out of dock or slip is even more fabulous in my opinion. Seamanship and boat handling skill is all fine and good, but if I have the ability to put the boat wherever I want it with the push of a button or the manipulation of no-brainer joystick, that's what I want to do. Screw this helm and rudder and shift lever crap. That's the OLD way of controlling a boat and it's time to put it in the Smithsonian.
I have not had an opportunity to drive a pod-drive boat, but I know two GB owners who have. They are both long-time boat owners, very skilled at both single and twin engine boat handling, and both of them have told me the GB41 is in their opinions the only way to go if one has the money.
On the list of "change is evil" groups, commercial fisherman are probably at the top, but recreational boaters are not far below it. Part of this is due to the fact that the boating budget of most recreational boaters, particularly in the case of larger boats like the "heavy cruisers" (to use Eric's term) most of us on this forum have, dictate the purchase and operation of an older boat, or a newer conventionally powered boat. And it's human nature to defend to the hilt whatever one happens to have, car, boat, plane, lawn mower, you name it. Hence the never-ending argument about bow thrusters, stern thrusters, etc. People who don't have them feel that having one makes one a total wuss, and all the racket they put up about how using a thruster makes a boater a limp-wristed sissy who has no business being out on the water at all is enough to put people who do have them on the defensive and feel guilty about using them. Which is total BS in my opinion.
Pod drives are the same thing. Everyone who bitches about them and how they're only for people with no ability to handle a boat probably don't have them. I think pod drives are fantastic although I doubt we will ever be in a position to buy a boat with them. They improve maneuverability, which enhances safety and makes the operation of the boat less stressful. Those all seem like Good things to me.* My wife has no qualms about conning our boat in the fog, in rough water, you name it.* She has no qualims about taking it out of our slip.* But she is very leering about docking.* If we had a boat with which she could push a button or wiggle a joystick in an intuitive manner and the boat would go where she wanted it to go, this would eliminate a stress-producing aspect of boating for her, which would make her enjoy boating that much more, which would make me enjoy boating that much more.* I don't see any downside to that.
The cons about pod drives I have seen discussed are, other than the cost, are....
They are vulnerable to debris. Well, so are the props, shafts, struts, and rudders on our boat.
Pod drives are too complex. That's not the pod drive's fault, that's the fault of the person who doesn't understand them. An iPhone is complex, too. We were at a Christmas party last night. At one point most of us were trying to show each other funny videos on our smart phones. It would have been a great Norman Rockwell painting. The younger folks, by which I mean early 20s to mid 30s or so, were zipping around on their phones, participating in conversations with the people around them, and eating. The older folks were fully concentrating on their phones in silence, occasionally asking each other how to do such and such, most of them hopelessly ensnared in a maze of menus and choices. * Complexity is not so much an attribute as it is a perception.
If a pod drive system fails it's gonna cost an arm and a leg to fix it. Well, these days you can say the same for a car. Even if the fault is curable by a black-box swap, the work might take ten minutes but the box will cost an arm and a leg. That's the way things are these days, from cars to jetliners, and it's the price of progress. The solution is not to stick with an inefficient, slow, limited-capability system but to make the new, efficient, highly-capable system reliable so you don't have to fix it (very often). Unfortunately this kind of reliability costs a lot of money, hence the out-of-my-reach price on the GB41.
So I think pod drives are the way to do if one has the bucks to spend on a boat that has them. We don't, so we'll stick with our Jurassic drive-train of FL120s, shafts, struts, cutless bearings, shaft logs, and rudders. As I've said, being out on the water in anything is better than not being out on the water at all, but that doesn't mean that I have to like or defend our ancient, inefficient, slug of a boat as being the preferred way to go.
Marin,** The GB41 EU is awesome,* Watching the demos on u-tube gave me goosebumps. Owning a single screw 7kt boat with no bow thruster the Pod Driven GB looks amazing.* If money were no object I would definately give her a hard look.** What is your opinion about the cross-linked poly fuel tanks GB has chosen to use in the 2010 41EU?*Sorry for going off subject.* JohnP
IG32* #25* "Adagio"
-- Edited by Marin on Sunday 26th of December 2010 02:52:05 PM
