Don't make this mistake...

[princeofthehouse]

I just did a hand launch and hand catch from a boat last week. Did not sleep the night before thinking about all the things that could go wrong. Watched as many videos (of boat launch fails) as I could to prepare me for my first attempt. One thing I learned was to check the boats instrument panel to check for drift speed while stopped and always launch and land the drone from the rear of the boat. You will be able to launch without problems (even if the boat is moving forward) and during landing if something goes wrong, you can at least crash land in the boat and there is no way for your drone to slide in the water as it will be protected by the walls of the boat. Regardless, definitely always good to have the boat stopped.
In the end everything went well (although my hand was shaking like a leaf) and below is the result of that flight. Had to fly and film manually as I was having trouble with the active track staying close enough to the boat. It just kept drifting further way even though I set it to follow at max speed. Any hints in that respect would be appreciated.

you may find the follow me feature helps rather then active track or try the autopilot app options, will use the gps and such of your controller or can track another persons phone or such using the airspace app that is free and companion to it.

 

[FatherXmas]

i don't think u can lose a finger. first of all you switch to tripod mode so the mavic moves really slow like less than 2 miles per hour. When you grab the line at that speed it shouldn't cut your finger it's basically almost static. Worse case you can bring some leather gloves.

I'm not sure about that, I accidentally got my finger into the prop on my Spark, ended up with 2 stitches.