Neutral is not Neutral in 2019+ Boats

[mwalker4]

3 years ago my wife and I purchased a 2019 190 with directional reverse buckets. During trailering, I go get the trailer and my wife trailers the boat. This is usually the only time she drives the boat, which has been a little hard on the learning curve for this boat. After go through many calm discussions we came up with the theory of the issue. One thing really hard to get is that neutral is not neutral and has a direction with the 2019+ buckets. I believe you should consider that the boat is being steered by thrust in neutral because the reverse portion of the thrust has an additional direction to it and that the forward thrust does not. I also think this thrust is in opposition to your anticipated steering. So even with fins, you can't get a small speed up and put it into neutral and simply steer with the "rudder" the last few feet. It is much better to leave in idle and short burst into reverse for any slowing and adjustments needed. I know the short burst is standard procedure to slow speed jet boat steering, but thrust steering in neutral is not usually anticipated. Thoughts?

When I saw Lateral Thrusters 2.0 and the redesign of the TVs, I thought that this would accentuate the steering effect in neutral and something that people coming from other boat types really need to understand. I also think that the current fins block the lateral reverse thrust so that increases the rudder effect when in neutral.

 

[Maccam26]

I found that adjusting the bucket got me to a true neutral (very very close). But… I actually had to cut the rod to get a bit more adjustment up. My boat had always pulled in reverse quite strongly from the factory setup and Made steering hard docking as the reverse thrust kept pulling the back left / right… I measured the gap and reviewed the shop manual and my bucket wasn’t really close to spec. After the adjustment, now the boat tracks fairly straight even in neutral I can affect the outcome using mostly rudder. The bump in and out of neutral definitely controls he steering in docking the best.

 

[2kwik4u]

I don't think it's a 2019 issue. This is a jet boat trait for the most part. Because direction is controlled by mechanical redirection of thrust and not by reversing rotation of a screw, it just kind of is what it is.

@haknslash wrote an exceptional post on how to use NWM and TDE to maintain control around the dock. I adopted that practice and dock like a champ now, it's not a silver bullet for realigning your thought process to drive a jet vs a car, but it's a damn fine start.

https://jetboaters.net/threads/how-i-use-no-wake-mode-and-tde-to-retrieve-my-boat.17161/

 

[mwalker4]

Excellent thoughts and references and I do recommend the new boater read it. I guess I wanted to emphasize that in steering in neutral is not recommended especially for the 2019+. Not only is not as effective but actually might be counter to what you would expect. For instance, you are steering to over come wind as you approach the trailer in NWM and you want to glide in while still steering. When you go into neutral your rear end drifts the opposite to the expected direction. While turning in neutral your AK and resultant jet thrust actually fight each other. If you are going fast enough the AK and fins easily win the battle.

I my wife's case it was a downward spiral. She lost confidence so she would go slower making steering less predictable. So I convince her to stay out of neutral, come in hotter and not worry about it as much, which worked. Our other challenge, definitely not unique to 2019+, was hitting the reverse too softly. I had to convince her to really hit the reverse hard if she wanted to stop.

She has it now, but we spent a lot of years and hours boating with an I/O and breaking old habits are hard when you don't do it more. We will both be retired next summer so we should get much more practice.

 

[mwalker4]

I don't think it's a 2019 issue. This is a jet boat trait for the most part. Because direction is controlled by mechanical redirection of thrust and not by reversing rotation of a screw, it just kind of is what it is.

@haknslash wrote an exceptional post on how to use NWM and TDE to maintain control around the dock. I adopted that practice and dock like a champ now, it's not a silver bullet for realigning your thought process to drive a jet vs a car, but it's a damn fine start.

https://jetboaters.net/threads/how-i-use-no-wake-mode-and-tde-to-retrieve-my-boat.17161/

I believe you are a Mech E, can you draw up a force vector diagram.

 

[2kwik4u]

I believe you are a Mech E, can you draw up a force vector diagram.

be happy to. I'll draw it up on the white board at work tomorrow