Using bow thruster to steer while underway

Something is definitely wrong with this picture. Looks like Dothan Cut, south of Staniel which is a very safe and easy cut even with the current running against the wind. conditions don’t even look bad at all.

He s using a lot of steering so obviously he has steering. He has hydraulics since the thruster is working so the stabs should be up as well

weird.

That would be enough frozen drinks for small cruise ship

Something is wrong here.
Was he idling thru there?
Was it shallow and the bow was getting sucked down?
Stabilizers set to free? or just off? The following waves catching them?
Way to much stuff upstairs?

Another observation;
Thruster running, wheel turned both directions.

One thing I learned long ago. Some APs can not do inlets on a following sea.
Was this guy baffled? No idea or clue? Was the AP running and just to slow over all to work correctly and this guy was adding to the issue?
What's with the rolls on a nice day??

Re-read post # 9
I really don't want to go hard against the guy in the video,, yet.
Any way to ask him Whisky Tango Foxtrot??

BTW
I've done better with one of two down coming in the StJohns with shift on my stern.
We don't need no stinking thruster....

There is another video on that same YouTube channel showing underwater footage. It s a single engine boat with a BIG rudder.

Like most cuts in the exumas, Dotham is pretty deep so That wasn’t a factor. Neither was the APnas he his clearly hand steering. Personally I never run a cut on AP.

Then he may had just be over cautions and running to slow,, way to slow?

I fully agree with all previous comments about the somewhat weird behaviour.
But I'm not so sure that it's just the helmsman to be blamed, because there are moments where the boat seems way too slow to respond to almost hard over steering, and that's the reason why he resorts to the b/t.
My guess is that he's going with a rather strong current, and if there's a mistake it's that he feared going too fast in terms of SOG, so he kept a too slow STW (say 2 or 3 kts), hence drastically reducing the rudder responsiveness. So, maybe with a more "normal" STW the thruster would have been unnecessary, but as I said I'm just guessing.

Ref. the stabilizers, I would think that they were not running at all in that video, for some reason.
Though a very slow STW would explain also a much lower fin stabs effectiveness.
Anyway, here's another video of the same guy, running in open sea and worse conditions, that shows how the same boat behaves with stabs running normally.
She's still pitching a lot, definitely more than in the OP video, but as we all know there's nothing stabilizers can do for pitching.
OTOH, rolling is pretty close to none, as it should be.

Next thing you'll tell us that you'd rather cross an ocean with a Sunseeker than with a Nordhavn...?

Looking at the video once again, it seems to me that the boat was going too fast approaching the cut and surfing the waves. If you look at the video in you tube instead of embedded here, you can zoom in. Overhead on each side of the garmins seems to be digital displays showing depths and GPS speed. Before entering the cut itself, there seem to be 11 to 12 kts surfs. Looking at the waves, the boat is definitely catching them…. While this should provide plenty of flow on the rudder and fins, it also means the boat will be a handful

the ground speed also shows that he was going with the current and wind so conditions should have been manageable. Again, Dotham is a very safe cut and in this case he was not dealing with wind against current. Even in the cut at peak current, the speed wasn’t much higher unlike other cuts.

the sound was a bit choppy that day but pretty typical. Had the conditions been rough, I can’t imagine why he would have gone the extra 20nm to Dotham when Galiot to the south and Conch cut to the north are just as easy. Whenever we run up and down the exumas we always try to minimize our time in the sound since the bank is deep and calm.

finally, I can’t help wondering why he kept the thruster going for long period of times, especially later in the clip, without switching directions while changing direction on the steering wheel. If you need help to from the thruster to steer, wouldn’t you release the joystick when you start steering on the opposite direction?

that boat sure seems to be a handful though.