Every boater's been there - there's one spot left at the dock and it's a tight fit.

The question is: do you go for it, knowing you have, at best, even odds of success or embarrassing gracelessness, or do you move on?

For a small but growing number of joystick-controlled pontoon boat owners, that question is now moot. You go for it.

Mercury Marine last year unveiled a new joystick control system for single-engine pontoon boats that's designed to take the uncertainty and anxiety out of tricky docking arrangements and maneuvering in tight quarters. The joystick controls the main engine and a pair of electric thruster motors that work together to give the driver better control of the boat when moving in tight quarters.

The thrusters are retractable and take about four seconds to deploy. Once in the water, boaters with a little practice can perform something close to on-water ballet, performing slow controlled motions forward, backward, sideways, diagonally or rotating in place, alone or in combination with another directional movement.

The thrusters aren't intended for full-time use. Rather they're designed to be an aid for docking and maneuvering in cramped marinas and other places where wind or current can make boat handling difficult, said said Adam Schultz, proactive customer care specialist for Mercury Marine.

"This is going to be running on your batteries and it's really something for short use," Schultz said.

Joysticks introduced as pontoon boat sales soar

The timing of the rollout coincides with a spike in pontoon boat sales following the shutdown of manufacturers at the height of the coronavirus pandemic. Dealers at the Milwaukee Boat show last month said more people are shopping for boats after they were exposed to boating for the first time during the pandemic, when friends and families turned to outdoor activities like boating as a safe way to gather.

The pontoon boat industry rebounded from shutdowns in 2020 to post 66,000 boat registrations in the United States in 2021. That was 22% of registrations, more than any other type of powerboat, according to Statistical Surveys Inc., a Michigan market analysis company.

Pontoon boats, especially large ones, can be notoriously hard to handle in close quarters and at slow speeds. They have a wide turning radius, are easily moved by wind or current and can be slow to respond to the throttle.

The joystick conrol, which for now is only available on higher-end 2023 models, can ease a lot of the stress felt by people who are new to boating or who dock their boat at challenging places, said Debbie Priepke, Mercury Marine's business development manager for Wisconsin, Illinois, Iowa and Upper Michigan.

Priepke, who got to test drive a demonstration boat at a recent boatbuilders meeting in Florida, said she was amazed at the ease and precision with which she could control the boat.

"I felt like I was playing a video game," she said. "The boat was so smooth. It made me feel accomplished."

Not a one-size-fits-all piloting solution

Harris Boats, a Mercury Marine sister company under Brunswick Corp., has boats with joystick controls since production began in the middle of last year, said Chris Bernauer, Harris Boats' president and general manager.

Those boats were mostly built to order — given the nearly $19,000 ad-on cost most dealers aren't going to order a boat with the system for their showrooms, he said.

While that cost may be eye-popping for many pontoon owners, it needs to be viewed in the context of the premium pontoon boat market, where buyers' only other option to get joystick functionality is to buy a twin-engine boat.

Most sales are being made at boat shows, he said, and so far the company is seeing good demand even though "awareness and adoption are stll early in this product launch."

Ryan Laugerman, service manager at Skipper Bud's in Pewaukee, made his first sale of a joystick-controlled pontoon boat — a $150,000-plus Barletta — during the Milwaukee Boat Show. The customer, he said, was upgrading and had been frustrated with the handling of his previous boat.

"For people that are wanting to upgrade to a larger pontoon boat, we're giving them the maneuverability where they can spin the boat on a dime, and they can get into tight corners," he said.

An evolution from big cruisers to pontoon boats

Mercury Marine's joystick control for pontoon boats stems from of the company's electronic boat controls that started with the introduction of the Smartcraft product line in the late 1990s. At that point, Smartcraft was a suite of digital displays for Mercury's newest engine lines.

"That was really our first our first first step and from there it expanded more into the controls, where we started using digital throttle and shift — getting rid of some of those throttle cables and shift cables in the boat," Schultz said. "Giving people that fly-by wire experience was more intuitive on the control, but it also just had an all around different feel from the user perspective, and that's evolved into all of the different systems that we have today."

The company introduced its first joystick control for large boats with inboard engiines in 2007. It followed with joystick controls for MerCruiser stern-drive boats, sport tow boats and boats with multiple outboard engines, including pontoon boats.

The joystick and thuster system for single-engine pontoon boats was unveiled in January 2022. For now, it's available only on newly built boats, but it's expected to eventually be offered as an upgrade for older boats with Mercury engines that are compatible with the Smartcraft system, Schultz said.

Each of those developments has been driven by what customers asked for and saw value in, Priepke said.

And what people consistently tell the company is that they want boating to be fun and something they can do with confidence. That's something joystick controls can deliver, she said.

"The last thing you want is when somebody's on the water and they they are not having fun," Priepke said. "If they get frustrated, we can lose them as customers and we have to start over. We don't want that."

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This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Mercury's joysticks for pontoon boats aim to make boating more fun, intuitive