speak to any boater and they'll say that the most stressful part of driving a
boat is berthing it. But Raymarine with it's DockSense system and the virtual
bumper are here to take the stress and strain out of berthing and banish those
nerves forever. We're down here on the Hamble today to give it a try and see if
it works. How does the system actually work then? Well Raymarine has employed
the technology of parent company FLIR and used these stereo machine cameras
which are usually used to count people in and out of shopping centers but
they've marinised them and mounted five on the boat two at the bow two amidships
and one at the stern and these build a 3d map of the perimeter of the boat and
then you can set a virtual bumper an invisible barrier that physically won't
let you get too close to an object, be it a pontoon a pile another boat you can set
it to different distances, usually a metre but you can take it down to half a
metre if you want. This system talks directly to the joystick's ECU and will
limit power so that you physically can't move towards the object and then it will
hold you in place. It's said to account for wind and tide as well and it will
fit to any boat that's got a joystick including shaft drive versions. Sounds
great in theory but does it work? The system is active at the moment it's just
holding us off the berth. It's a u-shaped slip we're going to go in stern-to. The
guys tell me all I need to do is pull the joystick back and the boat will do
the rest, so against my better judgment let's give it a go!
Now notice I'm not even tempted to look behind me - I'm using this readout here
which gives me a 3d plan of the pontoon area and also a camera view from every
camera so you can see all around and I can feel as slowing down a touch as we
get close to the pontoon on the port side. I'm just holding the joystick back
I haven't done anything different and again there's no temptation to really
look round, you soon get over that you're using this screen in front of you where
you also have a readout of the propulsion, the direction it's coming and
how much is being used. We're a bit too close to the port side so now you
can move away, give us a bit of breathing space from that portside pontoon and
then I can go back to hard astern we're moving back in and the boat brings us to
a gentle stop and we're in the berth now, I've still got the joystick pulled right
back, but that virtual bumper is stopping us going any further. We're a metre away
at the stern as I can see from the camera now. I can just let go and the
boat will hold us in place.
So we're hovering in the berth a metre away from the pontoon at the stern at
the moment, a little bit of a stretch for the crew to get off, so what we can now
do is reduce that virtual bumper down to half a metre and you'll see that on the
screen the bumper gets thinner and then it's a case of back onto the joystick
hard astern and this time the system is going to allow us to get within half a
metre of the pontoon before it activates and stops us knocking into it. So now
that is a perfectly comfortable distance for the crew to step off with a line. I'm
still got the joystick hard astern. I can let go now and the boat will keep us
that distance away. It's all very calm, it's all very relaxing, it's all very
easy. So now we're holding half a metre off the pontoon, which means that I can
hand over the helm. The boat will hold itself in position allowing me to
come right to the stern. I can grab a line if I wanted but you can just step
off and though there is someone at the helm at the moment, this is the boat
doing all this, they're not on the controls they're just behind the helm
for safety reasons, but the boat is holding itself right in that position.
Imagine if there's just two of you how much easier this makes life crewing
helping with lines - game changer!
Yes this is still in
prototype phase on this boat as you can tell by the way the cameras are mounted.
In the production version it will be more sympathetic to the looks of the
boat and I know there are people are going to say you should learn to drive a
boat properly first and I agree with that as well because you do need to know
how to drive a boat in case the technology fails, but when this
technology works it feels like a turning point. The biggest reason people are put
off boating is they have a scare when they're berthing, scare themselves
scare their family. This from we've seen today takes all of that panic out of it
and for me feels like a real game-changer.