wrote:
On Jan 14, 6:32 am, HK wrote:
CalifBill wrote:
"HK" wrote in message
...
http://tinyurl.com/398dcm
For the pussyboaters.
Trying to cure their defects?
Not in this case. Everyone I have encountered in person on the water or
at the dealer expos or in the actual boater discussion groups has either
not opted for the damned dam (!) or has removed it because it is
unnecessary. Except for one guy, that is. The top of the transom at the
motor cutout already is 25" minimum, and the dam adds about 11" to that.

Two of my last three small boats had "motor well" transoms. The third
was an open 20" transom. If a large stern wave wants to come aboard, it
fills up the well and flows right over it into the cockpit, and then the
issue is getting rid of the water in a hurry. Same if you take a greenie
over the bow. The issue is to get rid of the water, fast. If you have a
a "motor well" transom and only a pair of bitty scuppers to drain the
cockpit, well, you might have an ocean of trouble in your boat.

Typically, when a wave hits the stern, the stern simply rises. Sometimes
you might get a little water aboard. If you do, the scuppers drain it.
That's been my experience for more than 50 years. I rarely boat on small
inland lakes, but if most of my experience was on small, protected
bodies of water, I might be afraid of the ocean, too.

How much ocean fishing do you do, Harry? You're quite a long ways from
the ocean.


I have spent a lot of time "ocean fishing" on boats with
cut out transoms, with transoms lower than the one I have now on this
Parker, and with transoms that incorporate motor wells.

In each case, if the cockpit had the proper drainage, the results were
the same: when water came aboard, it drained out properly.

On smaller boats with motor wells, if a large wave breaks over the
stern, the motor well simply fills with water and the rest of it
overflows into the cockpit. From that point on, the survival of the boat
depends upon its ability to drain the cockpit. It's a far more dangerous
situation with a "motor well" boat if you take a greenie over the bow,
because the amount of water in the boat will overwhelm the usually tiny
scuppers on those boats.

I knew dozens and dozens of fishermen in the Jax area. Depending on what
was "biting," they fished the ICW or the ocean, typically in the same
boats: that's right, they used the same small boats for both types of
fishing. To get out of the ICW into the ocean in that area, you
sometimes had to run some hellacious inlets, with water breaking in
every direction. The safety of the boat and its occupants *always*
depended upon the experience and skills of the captain, not the
peculiarities of the boat.

The two best fishermen I know in the Jax area, both professional guides,
use very small boats inshore and offshore. I talk to one of them
several times a year, and he's still using Carolina Skiffs inshore and
offshore. The other fellow, probably dead or close to it by now, guided
out of an old wreck of a 15-footer. One year, he won the $100,000 first
prize and a new "offshore" boat in the big SKA kingfish tournament
there. So, what did he do? He kept the money and sold the prize boat so
he could keep on guiding out of his skiff.

When I lived near St. Augustine, the surf rescue squad used a 19'
Carolina Skiff as a rescue boat. Three feet of each side of the boat was
literally cut out so the lifeguards could drag people aboard. There you
have it... a "low transom" boat with fairly low sides and with some of
those sides cut out. What was important? The boat was able to drain off
any water that came aboard.

This is a b.s. issue that the idiots here use to try to "get my goat."
If you know what you are doing, you know how to handle your boat. If you
don't, then you should have a different hobby.