Inside vs. Outside Drives - It's All Relative

Sometimes when docking along side a dock in a twin engine boat, the engines will be referred to as inside and outside engines or drives.  While working one night the captain that I was working with referred to them as this.  It made sense at first, inside meaning the inside to the dock, outside meaning the outside to the dock.  The confusion then set in when we were docking at another dock, they magically switched.  Now, granted it had been a long day and I probably wasn't thinking as clearly as I should after four cruises.

While docking in our pickup location, the port drive was the inside and the starboard was the outside.  However when docking in the home port, the port is the outside and the starboard is the inside.  Once I thought for a bit, it all started to make sense.

Up next, explaining how to take up slack in lines with your engines.