Hi Bill, and Happy New Year,
I have never done this job, but I have used the Honda engine. I found I needed to use it in "reverse" quite a lot when going into pontoons and jetties, but not much otherwise. It is not the easiest job, spinning it round, flipping the tiller arm over and then remembering which way to twist the throttle. If you are just working off a trailer or a mooring, I would just use the rudder to steer, but if you are going anywhere you want to stop, you might want it to be spinnable. Because the engine is on a centrifugal clutch, it is hard to go at low speed. I wasn't keen on the clutch arrangement, but it did make the engine simple.