Well I finally took the boat out. I have a 47 year old 9.9 and it still has power I took the boat to the middle of the lake and made a right turn I didn't slow down and the turn push me off the seat! And started doing donuts I thought the boat was going under.

Kill switch is a must . Right below a life jacket.

You can't make sharp turns, it'll get away from you, some boat designs are worse than others for this.... easy turns at full speed is no problem but you still need to be careful. you probably don't have a kill switch on that old motor, and a life jacket will keep you afloat so the boat runs you over in it's next circle....at least they'll find you...

had a guy I fished out of the drink one time , he just got the plug back in after draining the water out doing big circles in the lake , he hit his own wake and it tossed him out

eventually the boat hit a stump over in a stump field , using the wake from our boat we were able to direct it's circling just a bit to send it to that shore.

max 12hp tag on that boat , with a 15hp motor and an overweight guy with gas tank also all the way to the rear , very bad weight distribution and no spring back in the throttle

I made the recovery of that boat when it finally stopped , luckily it only cost a banged up prop that killed the engine. but was that ever a squirrely boat to drive first thing I did was move the gas tank as far forward as the hose would allow to get some weight up there.

9.9 are powerful at full speed it lifts the front. This was my fist time behind the tiller .

tiller vs wheel are a different beast it takes a little different operation.

I have a little 16' boat and was pulling a kid on a tube or something once and somehow hit my wake and went from going fine to landing sideways somehow and coming to an instant dead stop. Deep V boats dont want to slide sideways. Jarred me pretty good. I cross most wakes at close to 90 degrees ever since.

I fished with John Sappington once. He was in a bass tournament in LA. He was crossing the river or whatever and went to cross in front of a ferry... as he crossed in front of what he thought was a boat ended up being a ferry that was tugged by cable and as he got there the cable came out of the water and clothes lined him off of the boat. Not from the area he didn't know that was a thing. Crazy huh.

https://majorleaguefishing.com/archives/2004-02-04-sappington-recovering-after-boating-accident/

I slow down , get the nose up and cross wakes as close to 90 as possible

the closest to getting swamped I ever got was by a coastguard boat , my dad slowed down , to cross the big wake 17.5 foot Lund Tyee deep V a boat we had been out in much bigger waves in than the wake from the coast guard boat.

he slowed down too much and with how close together the waves from the wake were the second one went right over the bow luckily he got on the throttle bringing the nose up and started the bilge pump to get the probably 55 gallons of water out of the boat as we went along nose up under power

lucky we didn't catch any more of the wave

there was a new navy ship trial in Green Bay some years ago 2015 , it cost the contractor $$ the hull design was one of the fastest around it also make very dangerous wake swamping boats at over a half mile away.

https://doorcountypulse.com/naval-vessel-wake-damages-dozens-of-boats-near-chambers-island/

our near call was actually near Chambers Island also but east of the island and years earlier.

Weight distribution is important in how a boat runs and planes out. Tillers don't help by putting the operator all the way to the rear. One reason they are prone to turn so tight at top speed. Try shifting weight to the front.

My son and I both run sheds in the river.
Jets tend to slide in the corners and that can suck.
He had to get a big hole repaired from rip rap on the bank, I have some dents

Running a jet on our local river is an almost must and learning to control the slide or drift is also a must. As long as you still have throttle/power you can come out of a slide. I run a 17-52 with a 60/40 Merc on my little boat. My big boat is a 20’ Gatorjet with a 383 Chevy. To navigate some of the log jams located on the shoals, I have to slide the boat 10’ or more while not coming off of plane. Kill switches are worthless unless they are actually used correctly.

A hour on the Wis.river and no bites!

I was cruising along the mackenzie river a couple years ago. There was a slough that ran out to the river at a 45 degree angle. One in a million chance seen a swan come out of that slough just as i was passing. it hit the gunwale of the 1448 jon and bounced up into my side knocking the 15 tiller out of my hand. I did two circles on the floor before being able to reach the kill switch. A life jacket saved my ribs from breaking but not from bruising. I rarely use that little boat anymore and swans scare me now.

proper kill switch use is clipped to your life vest while your buckled in the life vest

not saying I do that all the time but I am a LOT more likely to do it at the tiller than the console