Sloppy

[Sadey]

Cruising down the west shore of Lake Michigan headed to the river system. Boy these old girls are sloppy in a following sea. Thank God for stabilizers but I’m very envious of Sky’s new digit control right now!

 

[cww]

Cruising down the west shore of Lake Michigan headed to the river system. Boy these old girls are sloppy in a following sea. Thank God for stabilizers but I’m very envious of Sky’s new digit control right now!

Does your boat have a factory cockpit or one of the ones that was added later? I have heard several times that the aftermarket cockpit extension boats have this issue.

Overall, these boats have small rudders compared to the size of the propellers, they only come about 1/2 way down the face of the prop if that. Your natural instinct when this happens is to slow down a little to try and get better control, but the fix is the opposite, you have to teach yourself to throttle up until you have enough wash moving over the rudders that the stern settles back down.

For whatever it's worth, this boat is much better about this issue than my last boat was. I had a 47' Commander, which is a brilliant hull design, but the rudders are so undersized from the factory that most owners add extensions or swap them out for bigger ones. I spent so much time sawing at the wheel on that boat whenever I had a following sea that I learned how to make it behave the hard way.

 

[SKYCHENEY]

I had larger rudders made up but they showed up too late to install for this season. I'll be swapping those out next winter. DCameron just put the same rudders in his 53ED and so far has given the thumbs up on the upgrade. I'll let him tell you more but he's heading back to the lakes from Virginia right now. I think they're in Deleware Bay right now.

 

[Sadey]

Sounds like very worth whole upgrade.