Driving

Talked to a guy on the river yesterday. We were heading up-river and passed him running maybe 65 or so. He was driving a Nitro. Pulled out close to me when we were leaving and came over to chat. Asked me about driving. Said “I noticed that when you passed me today, you were sitting back, relaxed, driving with one hand, paying attention to the water but just cruising up the river. How do you do that?”I responded:There are really three stages of learning to drive a high-performance boat. When you start off, you are potentially quite dangerous to yourself and others. The boat can get so far ahead of you that you have no chance to avert a disaster. You simply have to realize your limits and take it slow.Once you get past that, you eventually reach the point where you can control chine-walking so that you can drive at WOT safely. You will probably be sitting up straight, both hands on the wheel, tense and struggling to keep up with the nose of the boat, but doing so.Finally you reach the point where you can drive the boat, eliminate any tendency of the boat to chine-walk, and do so in a relaxed manner so that you are not 100% focused on the bow of the boat, and can watch around you for the people that have not reached this point yet. Now you can pay attention to everything going on around you and trouble will be a thing of the past.He then said “OK, I was in my Nitro today, and was running wide open, doing about 72 on the speedo, when you passed me. I was really tense while you were relaxed. Is it because you are at the 3rd level and I am still stuck in level 2 learning to drive?”I responded “could be”. But I couldnt quite stop there. And continued “in this case, however, I was running about 65 GPS where I dont even think about seeing any tendency to start walking, if you noticed I was occasionally hands-off, because that is below 70 where my Cat begins to need attention. He asked “OK, how fast will that thing run?” I told him loaded as it was, with my son and dog aboard, we could run about 10mph faster, but it starts to really suck on the gas tank. He walked away saying “65 my a$$”. But that was the GPS speed. Speedos are pretty much worthless based on my experience with em.BTW, for the record, this was a Nitro Z19 (pretty new) with a 200 Pro XS 200. Couldnt tell you if there was anything unusual about the boat, but it did have two talons on the back. Did not look at prop, pop or anything else, was ready to head home.Last edited by oldtimer57 on July 12th, 2017, 1:27 am, edited 1 time in total.2008 Pantera Classic2014 Mercury Pro XS 200