Of the many topics I can discuss on this Grand View Outdoors website, I certainly understand that this one won’t appeal to the masses. But that’s okay. Last night while fishing a local lake, I witnessed an angler “doing it wrong” and I finally had to vent.
I’ve been driving tiller outboard motors for 50 years (I recently turned 60). My grandpa taught me how to operate his 3hp Evinrude in 1975 (I was 10), and I still own and use that outboard.
Grandpa wasn’t an avid angler or boater, but even he understood that the correct way — the only way! — to drive a tiller outboard is with your left hand. Period.
Why does it matter?
Steering a tiller correctly — with your left hand — keeps your weight closer to the centerline of the boat, which is safer for you, and the boat tracks straighter because the weight is evenly distributed from side to side. To turn right, you simply push the tiller handle to the left (away from you), and to accomplish this, you lean a bit more into the center of the boat. To turn left, you pull the tiller handle toward you. Easy. And safe.
The problem with steering with your right hand is it puts your weight off the centerline almost to the port rail (left side of the boat). The motor handle crowds your body, too. The boat is no longer balanced because your weight is too much to the port side, so as a result the boat tracks to the left when trying to go straight. Also, any attempt to turn right, meaning moving the tiller handle to the left, basically squeezes you almost out of the boat. Not good! Falling out of the boat during such a turn could land you right onto the prop, which could be deadly.
Keep this in mind, too: When starting a tiller outboard with a recoil starter (pull cord), the right hand and arm (stronger for right-handed people) is used to pull the cord, while the left hand is free to operate the throttle or choke. Additionally, the left side is often preferred for steering because it allows the user to keep their dominant right hand free for other tasks, such as holding a fishing rod.
What I’ve described here isn’t simply my opinion. Check out the pics below from those companies that make tiller outboards and tiller boats. Scroll through the hundreds and hundreds of photos on their website and social media pages of anglers and boaters operating tillers and EVERY SINGLE PIC will show that person driving with their left hand. No exceptions!
Don’t Trust Everything You See on YouTube
Like you (probably), I’ve relied on YouTube to find ways for doing everything under the sun, including fixing a broken dishwasher, toilet, etc. But not everyone who posts a video on YouTube is an expert, and I quickly found three such videos that show driving a tiller outboard with the wrong hand.
The first one is from a YouTube channel called Rental Boat Safety, and the video is part of a Power Boat Training series. (You can’t make this up!) The beginning of the 90-second video shows a person driving a tiller correctly (with the left hand), but then at the 14-second mark and until the end of the video, the person demonstrating how to use a tiller is driving it wrong. Click here to check out the video.
This second video is on the YouTube channel NauticEd (Advanced Boating & Charter Training) and it’s part of the organization’s Skipper and Bareboat Chartering Course. The video claims to provide info on how to safely operate a dinghy (small boat often carried or towed by a larger vessel). In this 12-minute video, the instructor is driving the dinghy with his wrong hand the entire time. Click here to check it out.
Important note: Both of these wrong-handed videos provide some excellent tips on driving tiller outboards. But the companies really should take a mulligan, delete these two videos, and replace them with ones where the instructor is driving the tiller with the left (i.e. correct) hand. And they should explain in their new how-to videos why, from a safety standpoint, that the only correct way to drive a tiller is with the left hand.
I’ll end my rant with a third YouTube video (below). This one isn’t from a reputable source that is attempting to teach people how to safely run a tiller outboard. Instead, this clip shows two girls driving an inflatable boat that is powered by a tiller outboard. As you’ll see, the driver is steering with her wrong hand. That said, she wouldn’t have avoided her problem even if she had been driving the tiller with her correct hand. Her problem was an even bigger one!
