Heading into a rough chop

The ’91 V20 is my first boat, this is my third summer with it, and I love it. I’ve learned a lot from keeping up with this board. Occasionally I’ll post a stupid question. Here’s one – is it normal for the cuddy to get wet during snotty weather?

Yesterday morning with a stiff southerly breeze the upper Chesapeake had a pretty ugly 3’ (sometimes more?) chop. Driving south right into it, I had to keep to about 9 or 10 mph – it was just too rough to go faster. A number of times a wave sloshed over the bow, and this ended up leaking into the cuddy cabin.

1- Even with the forward hatch cover and the windshield closed, I got this leakage into the cuddy. Is that normal? Or am I missing a gasket or something?

2- Under those conditions (3’ chop, some water over the bow), is there something I should have done differently to keep the bow up? I turned 45 degrees away from the bigger waves, and that kept the bow from dipping under but gave us a pretty violent roll. What would you do?

By late morning the bay calmed down and we ended up with a nice day. No fish, but a nice day.