How to Navigate Your Boat Through the Chop

Ask around, and most boaters will tell you that driving a boat on open water is easy and that docking is the difficult part of handling a vessel. But one of the lesser known details of captaining a boat involves properly navigating the ever changing wake, waves, and chop one may come across, with the goal being to provide you and your passengers with the smoothest, most comfortable, and most dry ride possible.

For those of us who boat on inland lakes like Lake George, there are primarily two types of wave action. Boat traffic creates irregular waves in every direction, and wind produces steady rollers, which are long continuous series of waves created by strong wind. When the wind starts to gale, and the lake really starts to churn, the rollers can get big and start to produce white caps, which appear almost like waves in a surf breaking as they reach the shore.

Now, it isn’t as simple as just hitting a wave at a certain angle. We all wish it was. This conversation begins with the type of boat you are handling. A pontoon hull responds much differently to disturbed water than a planing (or deep-V) hull.

Let’s start with our planing, deep-V fiberglass hulls, like the Cobalt Boats and Chris Craft boats of the world. A deep-V hull produces its soft ride quality by slicing through and disturbing the waves with the nose of the boat. The breach created by the forward section of the hull produces a pathway for the rest of the boat to travel through, which in turn softens your ride. So the key to navigating the chop is to use this V to your advantage as if it were a scalpel, and like a billiards player, leveraging the angles necessary to provide the boat with the paths of least resistance.  But it’s not just the angle in which you strike the wave that alters the ride quality - it is also the angle at which a boat leans in one direction or another that plays a role.

Generally speaking, driving a deep-V hull boat straight into the chop forming a 90º angle is going to provide you with the softest ride, provided the boat is perfectly balanced as it travels across the water.  But if the boat is leaning to the port (left) or the starboard (right), the V portion of the hull can’t do its job, as the vessel ends up striking the wave with the flat surface of the hull, which is responsible for the banging and slamming in rough water. So when entering chop at a 90º angle, ensure the boat is balanced, either by using your trim tabs (if the boat is equipped with them) to adjust the lean, shifting around your passengers, or simply putting the boat into a slight turn in whichever direction balances the boat as you cross the wave.

Sometimes, your course and heading dictates the angles at which you must enter waves as you travel from point A to point B, particularly when the chop is wind-created. When entering waves at offset angles such as 45º, you will improve your ride quality by leaning the boat slightly away from the chop, so as to attack the chop more aggressively with that V.

Moving onto pontoons, the guidelines get a bit more complicated, because these boats have changed so much over the last decade. Pontoon boats with just 2 pontoons respond dramatically different to the chop than tritoons (pontoon boats with 3 pontoons) do, and pontoon boats with lifting and/or planing strakes (designed to increase speed and efficiency) respond differently as well.

A pontoon boat with two pontoons should always enter the chop at a 45º angle.  By nature, they ride soft no matter which direction you enter the chop. However, going straight into a wave can result in water breaching over the front of the deck, leaving your gear, your passengers, and yourself soaking wet! Fortunately, nowadays, these pontoons are typically found on smaller bodies of water, and the vast majority of new pontoons are sold as tritoons with lifting and/or planing strakes. These boats, provided you are traveling at a speed in which the boat is on plane, can typically enter chop from any angle, but 45º is still advisable for the smoothest and most dry ride possible. The beauty of a pontoon boat is the adaptable soft ride in most conditions without much effort being put into the navigation, which is part of the reason why their popularity continues to increase.

Remember, even with the above information, some boats will ride better than others. We at Boats By George have long prided ourselves in providing our customers with products that are built with all of the necessary engineering and tools to maximize comfort on the water. Things like the number of layers of fiberglass, how deep the ‘V’ of the hull is, the sound deadening insulation in the floor, and even the height of the freeboard are all things to consider when judging if you can encounter rough waters safely and comfortably. And as a general rule of thumb, the bigger the boat, the softer the ride! So if ride quality is of utmost importance to you this year, take this information to heart - and maybe, just maybe, also consider upgrading to a slightly larger and heavier boat for this boating season. You and your guests (and your backs) will appreciate it!