Excellent insight IMO. Roughest day for me it was out of Kawai on the Kai Bear. 8' and snot-ty. Older 38' Bertram. I was happy to downgrade to half-day. Had one beer at roughly 10:00 a.m. I saw the beer again at 11:00 and 11:30 and I never get seasick.. Wife was a trooper on that trip. Noxious diesel was the final straw for me. Offered to buy the first few rounds on the hill and that was that after 3 hours of up and down sideways nothing biting. Took us 15 minutes to get back to port at trolling speed, never more than a few miles from port all day.
I try not to overestimate wave size.
If you want to see some big stuff just watch Deadliest Catch, in particular the end of this years Kingcrab season.

In the CG I was on the bridge of a 200ft ship watching waves go over the bow. By my estimate they must have been 500-600ft waves. :hi:

Seriously, I always went by the rule of take a guess of how big they look and divide that in half.

rkc

I got you all beat.......

Was supposed to get an overhaul on the boat but we decided to go anyway so off to the Flemish Cap we went.....

A little trying gettin out there. Two of the guys were fighting until one of em got a hook in his hand and went overboard and the other guy he was fightin with saved his life, then they were buddies after that.

Then we almost had a Mako eat one of us before we got into some good fishin. Man we were killin it!!!! Tons of fish comin up before our ice machine went down and we had to turn home but we had a small problem......

A nasty storm was comin right at us!! Two of em actually!!! We decided that unfortunatley the best decision was to just plow right through them. So we did and we almost went down at first when one the birds got stuck on the rigger, PITA!!!! My buddy had to go out there and bust the chain with a torch to right us back up, pretty scary......

After that it was nasty and gettin worse until we came face-to-face with the biggest swell I ever saw in my life, at least 10-stories tall. It beat our boat right into the white-water and many lives we lost. The only reason I made was that I was clingin to the ship's supplies of Funyans, boy we loved our Funyans back then and I owe my life to em.....

Crazy story......someone could probably make a pretty good movie about it if they wanted to.......
:clap::clap::clap:

Let me guess- The Perfect Storm............ which really was exceptional.
It wasn't forecast to be so bad the day before.
That morning, I was driving early from south jersey for meeting at LaGuardia airport, NY.
Found it very interesting that 1st time ever, my windshield wipers were frequently being stopped 1/2 way by the wind......Got to LaGuardia, NY weather station was discussing the gale and Low Pressure System retrograding down the coast. Well, I got to see the bay - waves hitting the airport breakwall, with huge waves of spray blowing across the runway and grounded planes. Wind was blowing 40 with gusts to 70. That's the storm that beat up former President Bush Sr.'s N. England home. People in New England said they never saw waves so big - hitting the coast. Our New Jersey coast saw the same, with massive coastal flooding. Of course, the Andrea Gail went down in that storm, with all souls lost. If you haven't read the book by Sebastien Junger, I recommend it- better than the movie.

That Perfect Storm - it was Hurricane Grace headed north into a low pressure system connected to a cold front. The Hurricane was " jet fuel" to the storm and as the giant low pressure developed, it did retrograde S/ SW from off New England to off Montauk, NY area.

Google the infared and satellite photo of that storm - there's a lot of good info available.

Anway, back to V boats, and rough water handling.

Here is my worst day on the water!! July 25, 2007 day after my B Day

http://wellcraftv20.com/community/sh...t=10+foot+wave

^^^Holy sheep man! Good idea with turning out of the roll. It sounds like it was a slower process than I would have imagined if you had time to get boots off.

I've thought about that same scenario. Do you think a couple large scuppers to the bilges below deck would have helped the bailing situation? I've thought about putting (2) 1.5" in set off the deck about a half inch

Has to be above deck!! But the I/O deck in 1975 all went to the motor well, was not sealed off! I have 4 pumps in the sea ox these days and it is also a self baling deck.

Four pumps in the Sea Ox boat ? Wow - reminds me of the tug boats on 4th of July - spraying all those water cannon !!
Do you use those pumps to fire water at other boaters ?

Lake Erie is a nasty little sucker. She turns from a nice two foot chop to bringing some nasty stuff in a matter of minutes. Can be a bad time if you aren't paying attention. She's only 50-55 feet deep and the deepest points from the western end of the central basin and to the west you're lucky to see 35'

Great fishin though