control lever-neutral lock

[wavelength]

Lets split this from its original thread.

If we are going to go over the top we might as well ban top mounts on all the other hard boats, after all the sealine T 60 does nearly forty knots and will do a dam site more damage than a rib and you can fall off a fly bridge as easy as a rib.
I can't believe the amount of people who just go around looking for things to moan about, why not go over a tell them to put there kill cord on

Call it a moan if ya want Biff thats up to you.
However we have a long long thread and lots of knee jerk reactions about kill cords/prop guards/new laws ets etc following recent events.
What seems to be missed (although it may have been mentioned in all that stuff) is that people went into the water from an extremely high powered family boat with, I seem to remember though stand to be corrected, a top mount control box.
I first used a leisure boat with these fitted at a boat show as a demo driver. 10metres of rib with twin 300s on the transom. I couldnt believe that such a boat could be equipped with a couple of levers that could just be leaned against to unleash all that power, with no lock to check its movement. The thought of someone doing just that as they boarded the boat meant we always transferred with the engines off. It cannot be beyond the whit of man to put the same form of check into the levers as with side mounts. Personally I couldnt believe that the RCD required start in gear protection but did not cover this. As for the Sealine-yep no different - why do it? Tell me the reason.
There ya go biff-another moan, fill ya boots!

[biffer]

Accidents are alway going to happen, it's all down to being a good boatman, yes you have got to have eyes in the back of our head when in charge of a craft but in all the years of doing charter, race boats and diver training I've never had anybody fall on the throttle, I've bodily moved people out of the way and had to tell over excited people off and even stop the boat when someone try to put his head in the water while I was doing 25 knots but that is what I have alway done and over the years it just comes naturally when you do a lot of it.
I don't think changing all the throttle in the world, yes world, just because a few people feel uneasy driving powerful boats about, the same with kill cords, you have to change the drivers not the boats, when these things are done without even thinking and you've checked everybody getting on you're boat and assessed which ones you will have to watch without even talking to them, then it becomes quite easy to handle any boat safely.
When I'm doing close quarter boat moving or towing I don't wear my kill cord and sometimes not even my life jacket, you can say what you like about this but in some cases wearing either can be very restrictive and dangerous, anyway I could blah blah blah all night, the bottom line is educate not legislate

[wavelength]

When I'm doing close quarter boat moving or towing I don't wear my kill cord and sometimes not even my life jacket, you can say what you like about this but in some cases wearing either can be very restrictive and dangerous, anyway I could blah blah blah all night, the bottom line is educate not legislate

I agree and my posts on kill cords have all said as much. And i certainly couldnt envisage a day when I was so bored in a boat I would want to wander around counting how many people were wearing kill cords

However I still dont think there is any excuse or justification in these days of innovation to allow the sale and fitting of uneccesarily dangerous control levers for leisure craft which are to be used by people of widely varying degrees of skill and social responsibility. Who knows they may end up being the cause of chucking someone out of the boat!

[biffer]

Good luck with changing that then Dave, never going to happen, you should have a go in the new joystick boats that are about or even our old raceboat with electronic levers and a thousand hp strapped in the back end, rudders so small she don't steer below 15 knots, keeps you focused

[wavelength]

Raceboats exempt under rcd and the driver (should) know what he's up to in it ?

used joystick thingies on a Rodman and on a couple of fast cat workboats. Prefer a wheel to hang onto when its a tad ruff

[biffer]

[QUOTE="wavelength;555066"]Raceboats exempt under rcd and the driver (should) know what he's up to in it ?

Which brings us full circle to being a good boatman