"Joe" wrote

http://www.bymnews.com/photos/albums...ormal_Git1.jpg

Those trimarans certainly can go fast enough to pitchpole. And you're right it's usually
because they go so fast they stuff the bow into the back of a wave.
Dame Ellen can have them.
But, I don't think a monohull with ballast on the bottom would suffer such a fate. They
just don't go so fast even down the face of a wave. They would stay on the wave and never
get a chance to hit the next wave in the backside. Also, if your going across the wave at 45
degrees like a surfer you stay in place on the face of the wave even if your going very fast.
You'd have to have a boat with good rudder control. But, I think it would be a safer thing
to do than trying to go straight up a huge wave. You'd just have to hang in there till the wave
wore itself out. A wave that big just can't be that wide for more than a mile or two. What
would that be if your surfing along at ten to fifteen knots? About fifteen minutes? Doable.

Cheers,
Ellen