On Sun, 10 Jun 2007 23:25:05 -0700, Chuck Gould
wrote:

General tip, try to achieve balance between sternway pressure on the
rudder and prop walk. With the rudder set to oppose the prop walk, you
should be able to roughly "steer" in reverse by increasing rpm (and
prop walk) when the rudder begins taking you off in one direction and
decreasing rpm (or coasting astern in neutral) when the prop walk gets
too dominant. Once you get a couple knots sternway up the prop walk is
less of an issue.......but you may not want to get up to that kind of
speed backing into a slip.

Speaking to Chuck's point, although it probably will not work as well
on a powerboat, one of my old sailboat maneuvering tricks was to give
the boat a good shot of reverse while still in the clear, build some
momentum, and then back in at idle speed or totally in neutral. This
requires some practice to learn how far you can glide before losing
steerage. On a sailboat it is quite a long way. The main thing with
reverse is to be quick and decisive with the application of power,
building enough speed that the rudder can get a bite.

The other big trick to master is the "back and fill" maneuver where
reverse is used only to check forward speed, and forward power is
applied in short bursts with the rudder hard over. Depending on prop
rotation, the boat will be much easier to turn in one direction than
the other. I have seen large workboats turn around almost in their
own length using this technique.