TOM TRIPPSeaRay's Greg Garland Maneuvers the 330 Sundancer with the Axius Joystick
For the last couple of years, we've watched pod drives grow in popularity in the diesel-powered, mid-size boat market. Now, MerCruiser is bringing the same benefits of the IPS and Zeus pod drives to the smaller boat market, the 25- to 40-foot, sterndrive-powered boats that lots of new boaters might be interested in.
At the Fort Lauderdale International Boat Show, MerCruiser and SeaRay are demonstrating Axius on a brand new SeaRay 330 Sundancer, a mid-size family express-style boat with two MerCruiser 496 MAG gas engines equipped with the Axius Premier System. I took a ride with SeaRay Captain Greg Garland on the IntraCoastal Waterway adjacent to the show at the Bahia Mar Marina in Fort Lauderdale.
Garland demonstrated departing the docks using the Axius joystick control. The boat show docks are the perfect place to demonstrate the maneuverability of the joystick control, with very expensive boats and heavy, pointy anchors just waiting to make their mark on our shiny new boat.
Axius uses a computer to interpret the demands of the helmsman and then issue orders to the sterndrives, throttles and gearshifts to move in such a way as to move the boat as directed. That's a groteque over-simplification, but the computer in the middle of the system is what makes it all possible, together with a couple of other MerCruiser-developed technologies, like the Digital Throttle and Shift (DTS) system, and the SmartCraft monitoring and control software.
When the helmsman wants to move the boat sideways, the joystick is moved to the side – a little bit for a small move and more for a larger and faster translation. To spin the boat about its axis, the helmsman twists the joystick in the appropriate direction. With a little practice – it took me about two minutes to achieve a basic competency – the boat can be maneuvered with extreme precision and in ways that are simply not possible with traditional inboard engines.
The Premier edition of the Axius system adds a couple of truly useful enhancements to the basic joystick capabilities. Among them are an auto yaw control, autopilot, auto heading capability, and the sexiest capability of the bunch: the so-called Skyhook System, which "anchors" the boat in one position and on a specific heading, enabling the crew to deploy docklines before docking for example.
The Axius system is standard on SeaRay's 330, although a buyer could conceivably order straight inboards or even conventional sterndrives. Why a buyer would do that is unclear, since the price differential of the Axius Premier System is less than, say, the cost of an interior upgrade to a typical upscale express-style cruiser. And the difference the system makes in terms of ease and accuracy of handling, especially around the docks, is, as they say in the ads, priceless.