Post by fishnfool on Jun 16, 2019 8:18:59 GMT -5
So yesterday we decided to run out and meet some friends down a river which meant we had to travers part of the bay. Yesterday there was a small craft advisory with winds 10 -15 knots gusting to 25, waves 2' to 3'
Last weekend I crossed to Annapolis in almost identical conditions. Running into a quartering sea with a quartering wind out of the south, the ideal conditions to throw lots of water back up into the boat! I ran in these conditions with the motors trimmed where I usually trim them up (4 or 5 bars on the trim indicator) on a calm day for speed and efficiency. We cruised in the low/mid 20's, the bow hopping and slicing over each wave, landing softly but throwing some big spray. Needless to say we managed to get a little wet behind the console.
Well yesterday running in the same snotty conditions, I tried something a little different... As I rounded the corner into the bay, I trimmed the motor down to 2 bars to keep the bow down and hopefully reduce the bow bounce when hitting the wave troughs, thought being if the bow isnt going up as high and coming back down as hard that the bow will displace less water so that maybe it will throw less water out to the side and thus back into the boat.
Well as expected the trim angle really helped to keep the bow planted in these conditions. While the bow would rise some into a wave, I would guess that the rise was reduced by 40% such that as I came off the back of the wave it didnt drop as much so the bow more quickly returned to its running attitude. The biggest benefit though was that by reducing the higher bow rise and ensuing drop and plow into the next wave the amount of spray produced was greatly reduced. In fact on maybe two occasions I only felt the slightest mist vs actually taking enough water to wet our cloths like what happened under the same conditions the prior weekend.
This way of running the boat was in complete contrast to how I've run the boat in these conditions historically, where at times i would actually trim the motors up more to raise the bow with the hopes of blocking the spray. In retrospect I think I was actually contributing to the problem causing the boat to produce more spray when the bow would rise up and thus dive deeper down into the next wave displacing more water. I also think to some degree that keeping the bow down closer to the water surface that small forward chine tends to better handle knocking down the water since there is less water to knock to knock down.
Anyway not sure this is the answer for all conditions but under these conditions this running strategy really seemed to help. Your mileage may very. I learn something new about my boat every time I go out on it.
Last weekend I crossed to Annapolis in almost identical conditions. Running into a quartering sea with a quartering wind out of the south, the ideal conditions to throw lots of water back up into the boat! I ran in these conditions with the motors trimmed where I usually trim them up (4 or 5 bars on the trim indicator) on a calm day for speed and efficiency. We cruised in the low/mid 20's, the bow hopping and slicing over each wave, landing softly but throwing some big spray. Needless to say we managed to get a little wet behind the console.
Well yesterday running in the same snotty conditions, I tried something a little different... As I rounded the corner into the bay, I trimmed the motor down to 2 bars to keep the bow down and hopefully reduce the bow bounce when hitting the wave troughs, thought being if the bow isnt going up as high and coming back down as hard that the bow will displace less water so that maybe it will throw less water out to the side and thus back into the boat.
Well as expected the trim angle really helped to keep the bow planted in these conditions. While the bow would rise some into a wave, I would guess that the rise was reduced by 40% such that as I came off the back of the wave it didnt drop as much so the bow more quickly returned to its running attitude. The biggest benefit though was that by reducing the higher bow rise and ensuing drop and plow into the next wave the amount of spray produced was greatly reduced. In fact on maybe two occasions I only felt the slightest mist vs actually taking enough water to wet our cloths like what happened under the same conditions the prior weekend.
This way of running the boat was in complete contrast to how I've run the boat in these conditions historically, where at times i would actually trim the motors up more to raise the bow with the hopes of blocking the spray. In retrospect I think I was actually contributing to the problem causing the boat to produce more spray when the bow would rise up and thus dive deeper down into the next wave displacing more water. I also think to some degree that keeping the bow down closer to the water surface that small forward chine tends to better handle knocking down the water since there is less water to knock to knock down.
Anyway not sure this is the answer for all conditions but under these conditions this running strategy really seemed to help. Your mileage may very. I learn something new about my boat every time I go out on it.