If you love the idea of driving via joystick but have a single-engine boat, Mercury Marine says no problem. Their new Joystick Piloting for Single Engine Outboards was introduced this spring, putting complete maneuverability at your fingertips.
The system can incorporate bow thruster control for complete mastery of your ship when shifting, throttling, and steering. This feature will prove particularly helpful for anglers, too, since it delivers dynamic positioning abilities with Skyhook and Drifthook. This allows you to hover the boat in place at the press of a button, while the system uses GPS to provide a virtual anchoring system. Or, also at the press of a button, you can tell the system to control the boat's drift so you ease across the hotspot in an ideal fashion.
Joystick Piloting for Single Engine Outboards is available for Mercury Verado and Sea Pro systems with their V8 250- and 300-hp outboards, the V10 400- and 350-hp outboards, and their huge V12 600-hp Verado outboards equipped with electric steering. That means the entire spread of large outboards from 250- to 600-hp is covered. Bow thruster compatibility ranges with various CAN-based variable-speed thrusters.