About
About this site: who I am and why I built it
I am Brian. My family and I keep a 41 ft CHB trawler in Port Townsend, Washington.
We bought her in 2025, and we are new to boats. This site is what I wished I had found when I went looking for a thruster.
Who I am
I run a small business from home with my wife and daughter. My background is in marketing and web development, and we are not in the boating industry.
This site is published by Morgain LLC, which is that business.
The boat, and the docking
She is a One engine driving one propeller. It steers with a rudder, so it loses steering at low speed, and in reverse the propeller kicks the stern one way only. boat, and our marina can be windy and intimidating. For most of our first year, the fear of docking kept us from using her as much as we wanted to.
One day, tied up in another marina, a boat neighbor showed me the DockStar thruster on his retired salmon boat. Until then I had assumed thrusters were far outside our budget.
The first time we used it
I read up on the company and got in touch. A few weeks later my daughter and I were at their shop picking one up. We fitted it in a few hours, with the boat in the water.
The last time we had come in, heavy wind had forced us to dock bow-in, and our neighbors had caught a line for us. With the thruster I spun her around and backed her into the slip stern-in, single-handed, while my daughter filmed from the dock. I could not have done that alone without it.
What it cost us
We paid $4,662 for the stern unit in July 2026, and that figure includes the unit, its track and Washington sales tax.
On this site's own figures, a A tube bored straight through the hull below the waterline, with a propeller in the middle of it. It is the conventional thruster. Fitting one is mostly a labor job rather than a hardware one. thruster fitted by a boatyard on a trawler of about our size runs $12,600 to $15,800. That is the cost table’s 42 ft trawler row, the same figure the trawler guide prints. The bottom of that band is about 2.7 times what we paid. It would also have been a weeks-long project with a Lifting the boat out of the water on a travel lift or a trailer so work can be done below the waterline. It is billed separately from the job itself..
We are fitting the bow unit next.
Why I wanted one
My reasons are ordinary ones.
Safety. We are new owners and I want to keep the family safe.
Damage. I do not want to damage our boat or anyone else's.
Cost. Spread over the years we will own her, two of these units cost less than one decent repair bill or an insurance increase.
Simplicity. I like a unit I could fit myself, in an afternoon, with the boat afloat.
What I own and what this site sells
I own a DockStar and I like it, so I am not neutral about it. This site links to DockStar and to every other maker it covers.
Some links on this site are referral links, and I may earn a commission if you buy through one. Those links do not change the results of the calculations or what is suggested, and they do not change the price you pay. A disclosure sits at the top of every page that carries a direct link to a product, and the privacy page says what that link stores.
DockStar is sized on this site by the same calculator as every other unit, in the same 15 knot breeze. Where it falls short of what a boat needs, the page says so. Their published prices carry the date they were read (23 September 2026), like everyone else's.
Why the site exists
When I shopped, I could not find anything online that helped me decide: the types, the reasons to want one, the options, the process, or the prices. I started this site to give other owners a way to see the whole picture before they ask for a quote.
If you want a tunnel thruster. A tunnel thruster is neither cheap nor easy to get. If that is what you want or need, the resources are here: what it costs, what the job involves, and what the makers publish.
If you do your own work. There are options outside a tunnel that do the job for less money. This site gives you the facts for that job too, without steering you to one brand.
How the figures are made
Prices are dated and sourced. Every price on this site carries the date it was read and a link to where.
Totals are computed. Every total comes from those inputs. None is typed in.
Thrust is worked from the boat itself. Every thrust figure comes from the boat's length, its hull, and how much of it the wind can push on, at one design breeze of 15 knots. The calculator prints its arithmetic line by line so you can follow it.
Disagreements are shown. Where two of a maker's own documents disagree, both figures are shown.
Owner reports are labeled. They are quoted with the forum and the date, and a quote is never presented as a paid price.
What this site is not
I am not a boatyard, a dealer, a surveyor or an engineer. I have fitted one thruster, on one boat, and I have not fitted or run most of the units this site covers.
The brand reviews say so at the top. They are built from the makers' own documents and from owners who have fitted or run them.
Nothing here is a substitute for a surveyor or an installer looking at your boat.
Corrections and contact
If a figure here is wrong, out of date, or missing its source, I want to know. Use the contact page, or email admin@boatthrusterguide.com. Include the page, the figure, and where the right one comes from.
Comments and owner reports are welcome the same way. So is a quote or a paid invoice with your name blacked out, and the contact page has a topic for it.
If the site helped, print the card and pin it on your marina's board.