My wife generally prefers that I take the helm. She's perfectly capable of docking the boat, but I suspect that if we are going to bump into something and damage either our boat or somebody else's, she would rathar that I was the one that did it.

That brings me to another of my boating philosopies, "Never drive the boat around the docks faster than you want to hit something."

When I am coming into a dock or manuvering around tight places, I am going dead slow, just barely fast enough to maintain steerage. If I am going to hit something with my 32,000 pound boat, It's going to be as softly as possible. The only exception is when it is neccessary to overcome a cross wind or current. I once saw a boat come rapidly into a fuel dock, try to throw it into reverse to slow down at the last moment, but something went wrong and he wound up ramming a boat already there. An expensive and idiotic mistake.