Walking the dog.....

In good spirit my friend.

Pushing our 58 x 18 Bert without thrusters in any marina with a smile has taken some time to master.
Past experience and practiced theory helps a lot.
Ready for Murphy to crawl on your shoulder is the test of practice and readiness (spelled luck). But a real feel and reaction comes automatic sometimes and blows even Murphy aweigh.

You cant do that reading chapmans, looking at pictures, playing sim games.

Now, If I could just master backing our rebuilt outboard V20, I'll have some real PoPah to brag on.

For you old tin drivers, I used to be an engineer for DEC. Our PDPs (computers) used to control those flight sims at many places. I managed the systems at Flight Safety, Savanaha GA during the 80s.
Big ole cockpits on hydraulic rams.
Also Rotors at Hunter & Stewart.
Seat belts were really, really required.

They were developing the G3 next door.

The only sim I could almost survive (dead within 5 mins) was the tank sims at FtStewart.
Inside a shipping container with 4 inch rams at each corner. The Gun sight eye piece would really kick into your eye socket (recoil sim).

These sims had feedback and could dehydrate you quickly. Faster with a company proctor behind you.

Still, nothing beats the real thing..

Exactly.

So, O B, your talking about the real big sims like the airplanes, rotors, tanks and ships.
Very much unlike the yacht sim you can run on your home PC.
Most boaters will not have access to the big maritime ship sim stages.

Not sure if rolling a MLB over a breaker could be sim'd anyway.
I think that real training is for the proctor to really put a stain in your shorts.

Your higher ticket captains have access to these big Sims. The light captain and req boater does not.
That's where I took the wrong turn on some of your comments. Sorry about that chief .

This method works perfectly on a boat with a relatively flat bottom, does not really work on a boat with a keel like the 53' Hatteras.

What does work is say you want to go to the dock on the port side, bow into the current. come in at about a 45 degree angle, put the starboard in reverse, when the bow starts to come out/away from the dock, go to starboard foward for a brief period of time to kick the bow back to port, then back to starboard reverse to kick the stern to port. 53' Hatteras handle pretty well in dockside maneuvers, I cut my teeth on a 1979 58' Yachtfish.

You anchor and wait for the wind to subside if you cannot dock the vessel safely, you always have options. A buddy of mine was in Hurricane Hole in Nassau in a hurricane in the 58' Cheoy Lee SF he ran many years ago and all the lines started snapping, he motored into the harbor and rode out the storm with the bow into the wind clutching the gears for hours and hours until the hurricane subsided. You always have options.