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@MidnightRider Excellent explanation - you nailed it!
@J-RAD Great points!
@Jon Burns As has been mentioned, Ridesteady will help mitigate the issue of the throttle binnacles falling, as the throttles can be pushed forward to where they won't drop (it's typically in the intermediate range where they want to pop back towards idle). You could use either the GPS speed based or the very smooth RPM-based mode to cruise in to dial in the speed to where you want it (the speed can be changed with a simple rotation of the knob either before or during use).
Ridesteady has fail-safe functionality not available in other systems. With Ridesteady, the system can only reduce throttle from the amount that you give it with the throttle handles / binnacles. This is implemented in an independent hardware circuit so that no matter what the cruise control wants to do, you can always override it by pulling back on the handles / binnacles.
Because of this fail-safe system, as
@MidnightRider mentioned, if you're using either GPS or RPM -based cruise modes, you have to push the handles down a little more than would normally be required to maintain that speed as if cruise wasn't being used (to give the system room to operate). You can choose to push the throttles all the way down if you like to prevent them from moving on choppy water.
If the system is "OFF" (i.e. no speed control being used), if the binnacles dropped because you're cruising with them in a position that they're prone to dropping, the speed of the engine(s) whose binnacle dropped will still slow because of the aforementioned fail-safe technology. If full-time engine sync is enabled, Ridesteady will still try to sync the engines after the drop, but it will only move the engine speed so far to try to sync. If they're too far apart (i.e. only one engine's binnacle drops to idle), you'd have to re-align them in order to regain sync.
Let me know if anything is unclear!
