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You put the joystick on and it’s unbelievable
“Frankly,” he says, “the first time I owned a boat was last July. I’m a relatively new boater, and [the barrier to boating before] was for me the docking. It’s not so much parallel docking as backing into the slips. The marina where I keep the boat has a strong current, and it’s very difficult to dock there. The IPS system makes it very easy to get into the slip.” The ease of handling was planned to be a big selling point, and it’s proving to be one. “First of all,” says Mr. Wiener, the owner of a Cruisers 390, “the big issue was the joystick control. It’s phenomenal. The IPS system of course comes with the control, and that made me a believer. It was the second boat I bought in a year, and I bought it for that system.” Mr. Rothstein, the owner of a Cruisers 420 Express and a selfdescribed tech guy, said that when he first looked at the IPS, he was “a little concerned about the newness of it.” But he was pleased with the speed and efficiency numbers. What ultimately tipped him toward IPS was the handling.
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“I boat on the Chesapeake,” he says “where it’s pretty tight quarters. . . . So it was maneuverability and fitting into tight creeks and things like that, where you can move around effectively. . . . The drawback is that I draw a little more water than I would otherwise. But it’s not a huge deal. The benefit is what I anticipated—even in crowded July 4 surroundings, I could fit into small settings.” IPS may have introduced a revolutionarily new way of propelling a boat, but there’s nothing newfangled about handling, efficiency, power, comfort and performance. Whether they have a Lazzara or a Tiara, a Cruisers or Chris-Craft, whether they’re on Lake Michigan or off the Florida coast, whether they’ve been boating for 50 years or five months, boaters are flocking to all that IPS offers. Even if that means they sometimes have to get the lines.
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