Maggie's Farm

He's a novice boater, but he's zipping around with a deep-V center-console offshore craft with 900 hp and very sophisticated navigation and control systems. Sure he is.

This is essentially what Dynamic Positioning is, what we use offshore with vessels servicing rigs, or laying pipelines, or doing floating intervention work. Even a vessel 1,000 ft long can be locked in place if it has the thrusters for it. Very handy, but the consequence over time for work vessels is having men at the helm with less of the hard-won experience they will need when a thruster craps out, or some other system failure appears - next to a rig. It takes years of manual experience in the wheelhouse to build those skills.

Very handy though. My twin-engine deep V had its two motors locked in place with the steering, but you could still twin screw a little if the winds weren't too bad, to keep it pointed.

This setup looks interesting, but expensive and maintenance-intensive. I'd like to see it in action, though.