Pontoon Boat & Deck Boat Forum

I was watching this video about how to make a pivot turn (https://www.boatus.com/magazine/2017/oc ... t-turn.asp). At 49 secs into the video, the narrator advises to "trim your engines out for most effective backing." I know what it is to trim up (prop less deep in the water) or trim down (prop more deep in the water). But I have no idea what he means when he says "trim out." Can anyone educate me?

"Trim out" is just the term you sometimes hear for the process of trimming the motor. It could involve trimming up, or trimming down to achieve the desired ride attitude. Kind of like "leveling out" a plane after a climb or descent.

Thanks.

But trimming for backing up? I stay down mostly unless I'm in shallow water or there's possibility of stumps. Speaking of shallow, since I've got a depth sounder and a separate chart plotter w/ depth, I've got the boat sounder offset by 18 inches, so I see depth under the hull and depth under the prop.

While I could be wrong, and this won’t be the first time for that, I have always heard trim out to mean out away from the transom or up. Trim in meant trimming in towards the transom, or trimming down.
What the writer may have meant in your example was to trim the engine until the prop shaft was parallel to the the boat’s bottom.

Trim out = trim up. Trim in = trim down.

When reversing an outboard trimming the engine up past neutral trim gives a little more steering effectiveness.

Mainly what I find is that the first few seconds of reversing creates the most rotation, and after that the boat will slip mostly straight back so after the rate of rotation slows I turn the steering lock to lock and shift fwd. Then repeat.