And now back to our regularly scheduled programming:

I've been thinking of changing my Bay Ranger's bow mount trolling
motor over to wireless control for some time now. After discussing it
offline with another poster, I actually had the chance to mess around
with one this morning on a Skeeter 22i with a 250 VMax Yamaha.

Motorguide makes several models of wireless trolling motors - the one
I was using was the W75 freshwater version with the handheld
controller (there is also a foot controller).

As I was running up the boat for the dealer, I got to thinking if, say
just for giggles, I could use the trolling motor as a bow thruster
from the steering station on the Skeeter.

It worked and pretty well I might add. It took a little testing time
to get it right, but you can make the boat move exactly sideways. At
the marina where I returned the boat, there was some dock space to put
the Skeeter in, so after practicing a little bit, I put the boat
exactly between two boats with little effort.

I know it sounds silly, but that could be a handy little feature
inshore if you have a bunch of boats sitting or drifting on top of a
rock pile or school of fish. Those of us who have been in crowded
situations like that might be able to use that "side step" feature to
advantage.

The Skeeter, by the way, is a really nice boat - up until this
morning, I hadn't been out on one of the new ones, in particular the i
series - pretty good little boat.

~~ crossposted to boatingforum: http://tinyurl.com/69bzhy ~~