Short Wave Sportfishing wrote:
On 15 Nov 2006 07:35:44 -0800, "Chuck Gould"
wrote:


Short Wave Sportfishing wrote:
SURF's UP!!!!

http://wcatwc.arh.noaa.gov/eventmap.html

Not as worried about a tsunami.

I'm joining a few writers from other publications for a boat demo up in
Bellingham later this morning. Promises to be interesting; forecast
calls for sustained winds of up to 30 mph and gusts to 40. At least I
won't have to wonder how it handles in rough water. :-)

COOL!!!

Now that's a boat test. :)


I agree, but at the last minute we're now put off until Friday. Phone
call from Bellingham; "We've got sustained 40 knot winds, with gusts to
60. Smoke on the water. We want to reschedule......"

Best boat test I ever did was one or two Novembers ago. We took about a
42 Grand Banks trawler out on a day in which no sane person with a
choice would have left the dock. Wind was just howling out of the
south, so we motored out to Lake Washington and ran along the
*windward* side of one of the floating bridges. This was one of those
days when the waves strike the bridge so hard that slop goes over the
top of the bridge wall and onto the roadway.
After the waves hit the bridge, they double back against the oncoming
crests and it's phd time (piled higher and deeper). We were taking six
foot chop broad abeam, (you had to look up as well as out to see the
top of the waves). Water was flooding along the side decks, the wipers
were running full tilt in an attempt to keep the pilothouse windows
halfway clear, and there was no point even attempting to stand up
unless one could find something to hold onto. People driving across the
bridge must have though we were nuts to be out there, and maybe we
were. GB's aren't known to be "dry" boats, and this one certainly
wasn't. However, we ran through that mess at about 10 -12 knots,
certainly above displacement speed, and the boat performed
impressively. It was a heck of a ride. I think I wrote something along
the line of "most people won't get to experience a sea trial of this
nature, but anyone who did would be pretty confident in the choice of a
Grand Banks."

On 15 Nov 2006 09:31:45 -0800, "Chuck Gould"
wrote:

Water was flooding along the side decks, the wipers
were running full tilt in an attempt to keep the pilothouse windows
halfway clear, and there was no point even attempting to stand up
unless one could find something to hold onto.

One place where Grand Banks does a really good job is providing hand
holds in all the right places. As soon as you look at them you
realize that it was designed to actually go places and not be just a
dock condo.

Of course if you'd turned on the stabilizers you could have probably
played shuffle board on deck. :-)