This is ridiculous.. the hybrids we make no adays are every bit as
strong as wood stringer, poly boats.. You can't compare what your dad
sold in his shop made of polyester resin, and the epoxy, mahogany,
glass and bi axle made now. It's in the engineering, you can spew all
you want, but you are wrong... The Toleman's in particular are some
beefy boats that go where your Parker never will. I won't let you pull
me into this one, you need to do your homework then come back and we
will talk..

On Sun, 17 Aug 2008 14:17:04 -0400, hk wrote:

wrote:
On Aug 17, 1:45 pm, hk wrote:
wrote:
On Aug 17, 1:35 pm, wrote:
On Aug 17, 1:29 pm, wrote:
Yesterday, i was at St. Andrews State PArk near Panama City, FL siting
on the jetty watching boats going in and out between the jetties. The
tide was going out with s little wind opposing it so there was a good
chop in the channel. It was a great venue for watching how boats are
handled in chop.
About 1/4 of the boats were clearly going too fast for conditions and
eventually they would pound too hard and slow down. About 1/4 were
going too slow and were wallowing in the deep chop. What did amaze me
was the number of small boats with transoms cut away so much that if
they slowed down their own wake would swamp them. These boats had
transom tops only inches from the water and seemed to have no business
in such chop.
My Tolman is the first power boat I have ever driven so I have no
other basis for comparison. What degree of pounding is acceptable?
According to at least one person here, getting swamped from following
seas because of a low transom is the way it should be.
I suspect HK thinks I am trying to weigh in on some controversy over
cut-away transoms but I never kept track of who was in who in that
one.
I suspect the Tolman is stronger than most Fiberglas boats and I have
never heard of this happening so his answer is useless. Any other
answers on how much pounding is too much?
My answer is correct: it depends upon the strength of the boat and the
fortitude of its occupants. Beyond that, it is a meaningless question.

BTW, if your Tolman is a homebuilt wood boat, it unlikely is "stronger"
than most properly built fiberglass boats of the same size. I could tell
you why, and in some detail, but...what's the point, eh?

I believe my Tolman is "Stronger" than a comparable FG boat because FG
is prone to fatigue failure whereas the Tolman is a composite of wood
and FG. In places where FG might fail due to fatigue there is a
redundancy of wood that does not fatigue fail. Any one of the joints
between the wood on the Tolman is structuraly stronger than the
corresponding place on a FG boat because the joint is very well
reinforced with Biax FG overlaid with two layers of heavy glass. Yes,
you COULD do this on a pure FG boat but how many do? Even then, you
could overbuild a Tolman to be stronger than any pure FG boat simply
by increasing the layers of biax.



Unless they are holed, fiberglass hulls molded in one piece typically do
not "fail." A point of failure for cheaply or improperly built
fiberglass boats is the hull/deck joint, but that is the joint, not the
hull.

Since, apparently, you have not rammed your boat through a really choppy
inlet at high speed, your "knowledge" of how it would handle that stuff
is strictly theoretical. I have run small fiberglass boats through stuff
that I know damned well would bust up a wood boat, even a
fiberglass-sheathed wood boat. I know, because in my youth, I managed to
"loosen" up a few wood and 'glass-sheathed boats until my old man read
me the riot act.

Run your boat real hard through some really choppy inlets and get back
to us. :)