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12 year old, learning to drive a boat, not going to race it just pleasure.

Voodoo, low power....Should he learn with a handle control or foot throttle?

Thank you!

Mark

Personally I grew up with tillers, then to controls and have only used a hotfoot/trim on the wheel in our tunnel.

For a low powered starting point I would use controls but all depends on what your son thinks. If you have a seat mounted in the boat, get him to sit in it and pretend to drive with a hand where the control box would be vs both hands on the wheel with a hotfoot for throttle. It would be more user preference than anything until you upgrade power when he gets older

Personal opinion, but the reason we use a hotfoot is to have both hands on the wheel. Great habit to get into, transfers over to vehicles in a few years...

Good points for sure. So excuse my ignorance, I really know very little. Can the foot throttle be used with any motor, cable etc?

From what I've learned over the past couple years, the more the boat is out of the water, the more it needs to be balanced on the pad by steering, and you want both hands on the wheel for that. Originally ran my Voodoo without a foot throttle and as it got to around 49, 50mph, really needed both hands on the wheel.. Trim on the wheel helps a tonne too, especially if racing, or if you have to deal with other boat wakes quickly and often.

Initially, with the smaller motor, if you are only doing like 40mph, you will be able to get by. But the faster you get that thing going, the more you want to be able to react quickly (throttle, steering, trim) and have strong control of the wheel. Being able to grip the wheel with both hands at all times can be considered a safety improvement that becomes more important the faster you go.

Yes you can hook a foot throttle up in any boat, run the controls just for shifting F-N-R

In that style of boat i'd be foot throttle and dead foot block every time. Trim on the wheel if you got trim.

Personal opinion.....foot throttle.
Junior will develop a pile of good habits that, as noted earlier, that are transferable to the road.
If you & junior decide to go with hand controls at this stage make sure he always wears a kill switch teather......it’s a very good habit to get into.
At the very least, the foot throttle has a good return spring.
JMO.

Another option since it is a pleasure boat is to use a dual action land and sea foot throttle. It allows you to have both a hand and foot throttle. We have one on our Charger SK and Jim started driving it at 13. That was before the 40 hp rule. Jim's over 40 now and we still have the Charger with the same pedal.

http://i39.tinypic.com/2hx8ui0.jpg

He could put the foot throttle on a slide plate (Bob's Machine Shop) so he can move the throttle when he grows.