Another mishap

For us we have found that slowing down and taking the wake at about 35 degrees is the best option. Another thought is to keep doing what you are doing and when the wife complains just look over and say I told you we should buy that 240. :smt043 I have had little success with that one so again I just slow down and cross the wake at about a 35 degree angle.

Wesley
 
Now that I have a cruiser I am noticing more and more that people give me the evil eye as they cross our wake. I even had one guy yell at me out in open water :smt101

I didn't think the 260DA would throw that big a wake but at any speed below about 20 MPH that thing throws a pretty good size wake. And boats like Gary's..............well you just want to steer clear of something that big. :smt043

BTW.............another little trick is to lower your outdrive to plant the bow of the boat in the water. That way it will tend to slice thru the wave as opposed to bouncing over it. But controlling your speed by slowing down when you see big waves is the best way to smooth out the ride and keep your boat from getting beat up.
 
Re: Thanks for posting this

Nehalennia II said:
craig240DA said:
Really glad you posted this, ...... We have a 240 without any pulley or anything to help.
Craig, where are you and what type of water do you boat in?

We were near a marina just off the Gulf of Mexico in Tarpon Springs. We should have just headed in but I let the gas get low and felt pressured to fill up. It was really the wind that was a problem, it got to a point I could not get the bow around, kept drifting towards a rocky shoreline outside of the ATONs and that's when the prop hit mud and cut the motor.
 
Dave S said:
....another little trick is to lower your outdrive to plant the bow of the boat in the water. That way it will tend to slice thru the wave as opposed to bouncing over it. But controlling your speed by slowing down when you see big waves is the best way to smooth out the ride and keep your boat from getting beat up.

Dave don't forget he's a BR. If you keep the bow low you run the risk of burying the bow on the second run of the wake. I would recommend that, like Wesley said, slow down but keep speed so that you can keep your bow up just like were starting to go on a plane but monitor that speed to keep it up but not level out. This will let the weight of your boat beat down the volume of the wake but divert the spray and mass of the water outward. Keep in mind most larger wakes have 3 runs or stems. The first one is usually the biggest but if you just run over it and throttle up you will crest it and bury your bow into the second, (gear in the bow under cover and your Admiral's hair gets wet- nuff said) then you get the joy of the splash in the face for the 3rd one. Usually you can't hear this wave because the Admiral is advising you with a tremendous level of Volume that "you should have taken another 12 or 13 years of college because you don't know the difference between "I DO IT" & IDIOT"

I usually can judge by the size of the boat I pass if I need to really slow down that much or not. It's about displacement, If the boat is bigger, it's displacing more weight = water than your boat weighs and the affect is more jarring. If the boat is smaller the weight of my boat will handle their wake much easier and demanding me to slow down less. Since I'm only 23' and your 19' we're on the low end of this food chain but hey you get the picture :cool:
 
The further behind you are from the boat generating the wake the better. The wake will be lower, widely spaced and more round compared to the larger, closely spaced steep faced wakes immediately behind the transom.
 
Nehalennia II said:
Dave S said:
....another little trick is to lower your outdrive to plant the bow of the boat in the water. That way it will tend to slice thru the wave as opposed to bouncing over it. But controlling your speed by slowing down when you see big waves is the best way to smooth out the ride and keep your boat from getting beat up.

Dave don't forget he's a BR. If you keep the bow low you run the risk of burying the bow on the second run of the wake.

Todd my experience is that this worked well on my 240 Sun Deck on inland lake chop and wakes from other boats. It took me a couple of years to discover this little trick and the difference in smoothness was pretty dramatic. While the freeboard is greater on a 240SD compared to a 185, first and foremost the speed you are traveling needs to be reasonable for the conditions out there.
 
Good discussion on the large wakes with smaller boats. There is just no escaping those waves either. We were drifting on the Potomac River last summer, where it is around 6 miles wide or so, and a very large cruiser went by way off in the distance. I'd say it was 10 minutes later that these huge waves came rolling by, really rocking the boat. So then, we start up and head back across the river, another 10 minutes or so later. There they are again! Thankfully I was already going pretty slow, becuase they were the largest we had encounted thus far in our boat...maybe 3 feet? Doesn't sound like much, but when everyone on the boat even hates <1 footers, its a cause for some excitement. :smt001
 
searay sport said:
I do have a question. It seems our boat does not like the wake from larger boats. What is the best way to cross large wakes. I have been steering straight into them, but the larger ones we actually jump the wake, and it is a hard landing. If we keep going along side the wake, our boat rocks alot, and my wife does not like it at all. I tried going full speed , but slowing down a bit, and going straight into it seems to be the best thing I have tried so far. Is there a better way?
I am going to add my 2 cents to this also. I am in firm agreement with the others above to head into the wake at an angle, and keep the bow down. You should not look with envy at the larger boats in this dept. I can tell you that it is easier to handle wakes with my 17 ft boat than the 27 ft boat. Just I can ignore more of then with the 270.

Here is what I do with the 17 ft Glaspar, which is seaworthy, not underpowered, and won't take water over the bow. I throttle back to maybe 15 or 20 MPH, maybe 25 depending on the wake. Usually I am overtaking the other boat. I angle into the wake at about 35 degrees, as describe above. If the wave angle is steep, hit it a bit more head on so the passengers don't get rocked so much. Then as the boat comes over the top of the wake, turn the boat so you come down nearly parallel to the wake and throttle back up some. This give you time to make your entry into and over the next wake. So I zig-zag across them, picking them off one at a time. The main issue here is you must start crossing the wakes some distance back, or you will be too close to the boat your are overtaking by the time you cross the last one.

This is a good thing to be good at, as it will serve you well if you have to run into the wind against waves that are too high to take head on.

In the 270, the boat does not respond fast enough to be able to change direction easily while cresting the wave. It also does not have enough power for the weight to 'pop back up' on plane if the wake knocks me off plane. So I have to go into the wake with enough speed to stay solidly on plane, other wise I lose solid control of the boat due to lack of speed and directional control. This is with a single engine 270. I suspect if I had dual engine in a 280, it would be much more response near the slow end of planing speed.
 
Dave S said:
...........While the freeboard is greater on a 240SD compared to a 185, first and foremost the speed you are traveling needs to be reasonable for the conditions out there.

I think you hit the key right there. I had a 180BR and know there's not much freeboard and very little lift at the bow. Your 240SD probably had the same freeboard at the bow as my 230, so that difference is big. Also with Dave M's Glaspar, I will guess also it has a higher bow much like a Glasply with the flaired bow? I think those handle the wakes much better.
 
I will try taking them on at the 35 deg. angle next time out. Thanks for all of the help. Now if I could just find a way to get rid of the crazy bass boats going 70MPH, I would be fine.
 
searay sport said:
I will try taking them on at the 35 deg. angle next time out. Thanks for all of the help. Now if I could just find a way to get rid of the crazy bass boats going 70MPH, I would be fine.
Remove the front cushion in the bow and replace with that Gun Turret with the XBOX-360 controller attachment :cool:
 
I find lobbing a bass in the water as they approach a effective method of slowing them down for about 15 nanoseconds. :smt013 Gives me a fighting chance to get out of their way. :cool:
 
Just use the same approach on them as the wake, hit them on the 35 degree angle they should just bonces off. :smt043
 
In the old 160, when it was hot out I would sometimes stop right before the wave and let it roll over the bow drenching anyone up front. Sure everything got wet but it sure was fun to watch their faces!

to make you feel a little better sport, here is something that happend to me on my first day!

1988 was a drought year here. Friend told me he had hit something in the water in the area I was boating. I thought he said it was on the other side of the river so I intentionally was avoiding the area I thought the object was. We were riding along at 25mph about 50 yds off shore and wham. Turns out it was part of an old temporary concrete wall that was left behind when they built the current dams on the Ohio River. Water was way below normal and made the object shallower. I never understood why the object doesn't have a bouy to mark it!
 
wish2fish said:
In the old 160, when it was hot out I would sometimes stop right before the wave and let it roll over the bow drenching anyone up front. Sure everything got wet but it sure was fun to watch their faces!

to make you feel a little better sport, here is something that happend to me on my first day!

1988 was a drought year here. Friend told me he had hit something in the water in the area I was boating. I thought he said it was on the other side of the river so I intentionally was avoiding the area I thought the object was. We were riding along at 25mph about 50 yds off shore and wham. Turns out it was part of an old temporary concrete wall that was left behind when they built the current dams on the Ohio River. Water was way below normal and made the object shallower. I never understood why the object doesn't have a bouy to mark it!
:smt021

what was your damage?
 
Ouch that can hurt a t 25 mph
 

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Too funny

First Born said:
... when the wife complains just look over and say I told you we should buy that 240. :smt043
Wesley

Wesley, this is Way too funny, too bad it's not effective for you. I read it to the wife and we were both laughing out loud. :grin:
 

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