Somewhere on the bottom of Boothbay Harbor, there's a propeller of mine. When I was in high school, I took my dad's 21-foot Novi lobster boat from Damariscotta—about 21 miles away by water—to Boothbay to watch the July 4 fireworks. When I got into the harbor, the engine revs zinged at the same time forward progress halted, and I soon discovered why: the bolt holding the retaining cone on the prop shaft stripped out, allowing the whole works to spin off into the briny deep. I got towed to a dock and a wild project ensued that involved borrowing a retaining cone off a boat in storage and using a spare prop to limp around to a shipyard in East Boothbay for a fix.
So when I recently returned to Boothbay with the 2025 Yamaha 255 FSH Sport H, a certain Volvo Penta prop down in Davy Jones' Locker was on my mind. Except this time, I was certain not to repeat that nightmare. Because propellers can't fall off if you don't have propellers in the first place.
The 255 FSH Sport H, like all Yamahas, uses jet drives—and hence impellers tucked up under the hull. Those impellers are driven by twin 1.8-liter supercharged four-cylinder inboards that make 250 horsepower apiece. It's unusual to see a 25-foot center console with inboards, and even more so to find one with Helm Master joystick control. That's what the "H" stands for in the name, and Yamaha says the 255 is its first jet-drive boat to get joystick docking.
To enable that technology, which allows the boat to spin on its axis or crab sideways at the nudge of the joystick, each drive needs the capability to throttle, shift, and steer independently, which means both drive-by-wire and steer-by-wire. On outboard boats with Helm Master, you can see what's happening as the engines orient themselves at strange angles to direct thrust sideways rather than fore-aft. With the 255 FSH Sport H and its submerged drives, the result seems more like magic. The engines rev up and the boat spins, or slides perpendicular to the dock, or nudges up on a diagonal. Besides the practical benefit, it's a fun show.
Now, I'd like to think I know how to dock a boat well enough, but I can still get caught out by currents or wind and sometimes just the stress-inducing gaze of whatever onshore audience is hoping to catch the next Qualified Captain calamity. Helm Master eradicates all that docking stress. When I had exactly 25 feet of fuel dock for this 25-foot boat—the rest of it being consumed by a towering multimillion-dollar catamaran—I calmly lined up about 15 feet off, activated the joystick, and precisely slid over to the dock while the curious marina attendants looked on.
The effect is as if your boat, and only your boat, catches a gentle on-shore breeze and drifts into just the right spot. It's kind of addicting, and I've been docking boats the traditional way for decades. If Helm Master is a stress reliever for me, I imagine it would be a godsend for a novice boater. Yeah, you might never learn to dock with the throttle and steering wheel, but you wouldn't necessarily need to, either.
Room for Improvement
There are some joystick-related drawbacks, of course. The 255 FSH Sport H's $111,999 price is about as inexpensive as it gets for a 25-foot center console with Helm Master, but the 255 FSH Sport E with the same power and no joystick is $99,699. And since the drives need to steer independently, the Sport H doesn't have Yamaha's articulated keel, which the Sport E does. So it goes where its thrust nozzles are pointed and it could use a steering position indicator on the display, a sort of digital top-dead-center mark to help find straight ahead without trial and error.
But I'd say the pros outweigh the cons, and I'd go for the H over the E if I were contemplating a 255, the same way I'd get a GM vehicle with Super Cruise even though I know how to drive on the highway. If technology can alleviate stress in your life, then I'm fine with embracing it rather than fearing some hypothetical atrophy of skills.
And, Helm Master aside, the 255 FSH Sport H is a fabulous boat, especially at its price point. The layout is almost like a dual-console mashup with a center console, with seating for 12 but plenty of room to move around when you're fishing. The clean stern is also a boon for chasing fish or hooking up a tube for rides (there are even stereo controls back there for when you're pulled up on a sandbar and lounging). The jet drives don't get hung up on Maine lobster trap lines—another occupational hazard during my high school summer job as a lobsterman—and with 500 hp, the 255 hauls ass.
It's actually fast enough to be unpleasant for passengers, as I was informed when I hit 54 mph. Stick your head of your sunroof at 54 mph and you'll understand what they were talking about. Slow down to about 30 mph, though, and all is serene and you get about 1.7 mpg, which is pretty decent for a 500-hp boat that's rated to carry 2700 pounds. One foible we discovered: the trash can bin compartment on the starboard side isn't sealed, as we learned when a kid stuffed a phone in a shoe, threw it in the trash can and subsequently had the phone bounce out and wedge itself between the inner and outer hulls. It was retrieved with a couple of coat-hangers.
I think boaters tend to be like HD truck buyers (and many are both) in that there's a strong traditionalist streak, a deference toward what's worked in the past. The 255 FSH Sport H is an untraditional center console—inboard, jet-drive, steer-by-wire with joystick control. But if you can get over your preconceptions and boat-control egoism, the 255 FSH makes a strong case for embracing change. Every time I idled through the channel in Boothbay, I thought about how I had a propeller down there on the bottom somewhere. But this time I didn't need it.
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