Helm Master EX, fitted to your boat.

FishPoint (Bow / Stern)

Holds the spot without an anchor.

Pick FishPoint Bow or Stern and the boat stays where it is. Position is what's being held — the bow stays free to swing, and nothing goes over the side to make it happen.

• GPS and small throttle inputs do the work; heading is left alone.
• Suits fishing straight down under the boat, or sitting still long enough to eat.

DriftPoint / DriftPoint Track

A drift you can still steer.

This one inverts FishPoint. The bow angle is what gets locked and the boat is free to move with the water. Lateral Assist is built in on both variants.

• GPS and minimal RPM hold the heading; position is left to the drift.
• Worth it whenever the drift matters more than the spot — a wreck, kites, or the view off the transom.
• The Track variant adds a waypoint route, so the drift follows a shoreline or a contour rather than the current alone.

StayPoint

Position and heading, both held.

StayPoint marks where you are and which way you're pointed, then keeps both. Yamaha rates the hold at 10 feet in ideal conditions and 75 feet in high wind or current.

• Each outboard is thrust-controlled on its own, which is how both axes stay pinned at once.
• The everyday use is waiting — on a bridge, on a slip, on the boat ahead of you at the fuel dock.

Twins and up. Yamaha offers StayPoint on twin, triple, quad and quint installations — not on single-engine boats.

Pattern Steer (Pattern Search)

Grid the water until you find them.

The helm gets handled while a grid is run underneath you. Once it finds productive water you can come back and work the same ground again.

• It closes the grid back at your starting point and repeats it until you switch it off.
• Stack it with sub-idle trolling, and change speed from the binnacle without leaving the pattern.

Pattern Steer (Zig Zag / Spiral)

Make the bait do something.

A bait that stalls and then moves suddenly is what gets a fish's attention. Pattern Steer runs the boat through a zig zag or a spiral so that happens without anyone steering it.

• Spiral suits a wreck; zig zag suits a school you're trying to get a reaction from.

Pattern Steer (Williamson Turn)

Back to the spot you just left.

The Williamson turn is the two-step maneuver that puts a boat back onto its own track, reversed. Here it runs off one input instead of a timed pair of helm movements.

• It earns its keep after dark, in poor visibility, or any time you can no longer see where you started.
• Yamaha's stated uses: recovering something that went over the side, and picking up a skier or tuber off a dropped tow line.

Lateral Assist

Holds the line when the wind doesn't want you to.

Wind and current pull a boat off track even in an automated mode. Lateral Assist corrects for those forces as they happen rather than leaving them to whoever is at the helm.

• Yamaha names accuracy and safety crabbing up to a dock — fueling, or putting people off.
• It is also what tightens the automated lateral modes, DriftPoint and DriftPoint Track included.

Track Point with Waypoint Arrival

Decide now what happens when you get there.

Track Point runs a waypoint route under autopilot. Waypoint Arrival is the setting that decides what the boat does once it reaches the last one.

• Three choices for the last waypoint: ease down to idle, come to a stop, or hand straight off to an automated mode such as DriftPoint.

Heading Hold

Pick a bearing and keep it.

Set a compass heading in autopilot and the system defends it, rather than letting wind or current turn you off it.

• The everyday case is a long straight run — up the coastline, or across open water.
• It holds in reverse as well as forward, which is the part that matters for back trolling.

Course Hold

Stay on the route, not just the heading.

Heading is where the bow points. Course is the line you actually travel over the ground. Course Hold defends the second one, which is the one that drifts.

• The harder the wind and current push, the more it adds over a plain pre-programmed autopilot route.
• To clear an obstacle without dropping the mode, a sideways joystick input shifts the whole track over — 10, 20 or 50 feet at a time.

Pattern Shift / Speed Control

Trolling speeds below idle.

Speed Control pins an RPM the way cruise control pins a road speed. Pattern Shift gets underneath idle by cycling the gearbox on its own.

• Speed Control holds a set RPM and moves it up or down on a button, with no lever work.
• Pattern Shift shifts automatically in and out of gear — Yamaha rates it below 0.5 mph, depending on the rig.
• That range is what the slow-trolling species need; walleye and back trolling are Yamaha's own examples.