18' X23 Landed...

[bozzy]

What are your thoughts on the dockstar so far? Torn on if it would be worth it down the road someday.

Beautiful boat by the way. Love how it turned out.

I haven't had a bunch of time to play with it. But, I can steer in both directions in reverse, lol. For the cost of the option, I think it is worth it. They also claim there's an improvement in steering at hirer speeds. Again, I haven't had too much time behind the wheel yet, but I can see why they would make such a claim...

[Loewen]

1) Deposit: I don't think $5k-$10k deposit on a custom build is out of line at all. That being said, we paid no deposit and weren't asked for one. I'm guessing dealer makes a judgment call based on how confident they are in customer being financially capable and keeping their word.

2) Dockstar: It works, but it doesn't work "well". Is it worth the money? Not sure I can answer that one. Part of me says no. When people say, "it helps the resale", I'll strongly argue you'll seldom if ever get the money back out of these items that "help resale". It might expand the target audience of potential buyers, but you'll never get the value back out of the original cost. Not even close. If you aren't going to use a feature much, don't get it on your build.

All that said, we love, love, love our X23 and wouldn't own any other boat, period.

[bozzy]

What are your thoughts on the dockstar so far? Torn on if it would be worth it down the road someday.

Alright, I got some feedback on Dockstar...

So in my marina, for my approach to my slip I have to go down a fairly long, narrow isle and then make a hard right starboard (90 degree) to get into my slip.

With my last boat, I would just take the widest angle I could get within the isle and aim for the pylons on the lift. It worked pretty good, although the odd time I messed up and it made for a classic rookie approach. The margin for error this way was zero, and my anxiety was always pretty high. The worst part about this approach was taking that wide angle put me very close to other boats as I came down the isle.

Now, same slip, but with Dockstar.

Tonight I got to try a different approach. So instead of taking that wide angle as usual I just drove right down the middle of the isle. I put my bow just past the far pylon on the lift, then cranked the wheel hard to port and clicked her a few times in reverse, the stern went port side and the bow came around starboard and I just drove straight into the slip.

It was so easy and simple, that I still kinda feel like a dummy for making such a big deal of this, LOL.

But anyway, now there's a lot less anxiety and a lot more control. I know most seasoned operators are probably laughing at this because they can put the boat wherever they want without Dockstar. But I'm still getting the hang of these v-drive boats and I also like to think that I hold myself to a higher standard when it comes to docking and driving around the marina. Getting it right is extremely important to me.

It's a learning process for sure, but atleast with Dockstar the margin for error isn't as tight. It's not the end all be all of my learning and progression but it's a worth while aide I would say. Still the best advice/method I've learned to date was/is just simply going slow and clicking in and out of forward or reverse fairly quickly. Click in, click out. Click in, click out.

[TarheelMC]

That is a gorgeous X23! As a Carolina Panthers fan, I approve of those colors!

We had a stern drive prior to our X23. There is definitely a big difference in steering & docking, not to mention the stern drive was about 1/3 the price of the X23 so banging it into a dock will hurt a lot more. Ours does not have dockstar, but we keep ours at a marina so unless we get back after closing, there is always someone on the dock to help out which is very convenient. We've had it about a year now so I've just about got it down, but if it's windy I still get a little nervous. Although I have no intentions of upgrading, I would like to see how much of a difference dockstar makes now that I've learned without. It's probably like having a backup camera... can do it without, but really nice to have.