Well, I've been practicing this maneuver now for a while and I've got it
down pretty good... in fact a little "too" good yesterday. I've been able
to determine the amount of prop walk and stern position adjustments using
the "back and fill" technique to back the GB just about in a straight line
into it's slip.

The slip is on the outer side of a floating concrete dock that had been
damaged a year or so ago in a storm. Several chains tied to mooring blocks
that held the dock in position had snapped, so the marina had big steel tube
pilings installed to hold the dock. One of the pilings is in the end of the
slip I back into, and sure enough I backed in so nicely I hit the stupid
piling with the teak swim platform and cracked a couple of the teak slats.
No big deal as it is easily repairable, but it was another learning process
with this boat. I am still used to twins with bigger engines and props and
when you put them in forward, the boat immediately reacts. Not so with the
little drive system in the GB. Even going very slowly backward, when you
shift the transmission into forward, it still moves backwards for quite a
distance before anything happens.

I am starting to enjoy this boat more and more. It has a lot of character
and interesting features that we are still discovering. Unlike the
Navigator that has much more modern equipment, the GB is truly a
"boaty-boat".

Eisboch