Adding bow & stern thrusters to 48’ 1982 Hatteras motoryacht

[PATRIYACHT]

We purchased this yacht, last year formerly known as The Guppy. We were lucky to purchase it from Walter who took great care of it. We are challenged with seeing the stern while docking and are interested in modernizing it and purchasing a yacht controller and installing bow and stern thrusters. We are sticker shocked since we have been given a round about number of $60,000 (the thrusters costing between $28K and $40K of that amount). Has anyone done this upgrade with their older motoryacht recently? Any thoughts on these costs? Any recommendations? Any other ideas? Our goal is to make docking easier so my wife and I can dock ourselves. Thanks in advance for any comments. Steve with the now named “PatriYacht”.

[carolinacoast]

start with these
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0...?ie=UTF8&psc=1

and a backup camera.

and some practice, and have fun.

You may find that you are happy to not have another battery system to maintain.

we do not have thrusters, and lots of current.

[Walter P]

Steve did install back up camera's on the boat but even then it leaves something to be desired. I
suggested bow and stern thrusters but I don't think they are worth the cost. I do think that a pair of
Morse controls in the cockpit would be ideal and depending on if he can find the Morse heads on the
used market at a reasonable price, this modification would be the least expensive and most effective
way to go. Does anyone have or know of where we might find the Morse controls?

Walt

[SEVEN]

A very talented friend of mine who has restored numerous boats refused to pay the outlandish amount of money to install a bow and stern thrusters. He paid approximately $5000 for each of the thrusters and install them himself. He says including everything, he spent just a tad over $15,000 for both. He’s my hero I would never in my life think about cutting a 12 inch hole in the bow of the boat to install one. However it looks as good as mine and my bow thruster was done by professionals.

[carolinacoast]

Our backup camera, with the help of a talented car stereo tech,is on a varnished teak flag mast that I only put out when single handing.
It is mounted at an angle next to the stern light and projects out over the aft cockpit so that I can see the entire platform.
image is reversed so that it makes sense, and the resolution is good enough that I can see any bird spots on the platform.

the mast has a whip on it, that I just plug in for the mission, and then put it back inside. I need to stay mid ship for the spring line.
will take a pic next time to the boat. just enough field of vision to work fine.

[Pascal]

Can you add a set of controls on the after deck? Running cables may sound difficult often it isn’t.

Adding a camera and a good monitor at the helm is easy and makes things easier

Personally I don’t like these remote control giszmo, for reliability reasons but also I find it hard to feel the orientation of the boat while standing there with a little box. I ve used them a little and could never get used to it. Also had a couple of time where the controller refused to connect. Not ideal when in a breeze

As to thrusters, if you issue is seeing the stern while docking a bow thruster isn’t going to help. When backingnin a slip, the bow has nowhere to go but follow the rest of the boat so unless you get massive current a thruster won’t help much. Hatteras have real rub rails that can rub on a piling.

I think stern thruster are completely unnecessary on twin diesel boats. Splitting the gears moves the stern sideway a lot better than a thruster which doesn’t react as quickly. Whenever I ve run boats with stern thrusters I ve never used them