Start by not feathering the wrong prop!

Here's an article on Chine Walking

Good article. I have taught about a dozen folks how to drive their boats, several on TFF. A couple guys swore to me before I got in it that the motor was mounted off-center making the boat undrivable at top speed. On one boat this was actually the case! The dealer mounted his jackplate/motor about an inch off-center. Must've been a late Friday evening job. LOL

Driving a high performance vee bottom at max speed is kind of like riding a bicycle. You didn't hop on it and ride it perfectly straight the first few times. You may have even fallen over and skinned your knee a time or two. Driving a vee bottom at 70+ is kind of like that.

You can read all the articles & watch all the videos you want. This ain't a learn by video thing. Until you actually learn to feel what the boat is doing & learn to make the proper corrections to the steering wheel as the conditions present themselves you will struggle with it.

The best description I can give you is trying to balance an 8 foot wide boat on a 12" running surface that is ever changing due to wind & waves while fighting the torque of a prop spinning in a clockwise fashion pushing you forward.

Try adding more weight to the front of the boat. Boats today are designed for guys to store a lot of gear up front.
If you aren’t putting in enough Up front the front end will walk all over the place.

Man this self isolation thing is a killer! Can you tell there are a bunch of folks bored to tears, sitting around watching it rain??

Yes it is true that adding weight up front will stop the chine walk. Filling both livewells full and putting 55 gals of gas in the tank will also help minimize chine walk. Adding your 330# partner will also do it. It will also kill your top end speed quicker than anything. The primary thing that causes chine walk is when you are trimming the motor up building speed as the hull begins to free up from the water's surface and begins to literally fly.

My boat is exactly 8 mph slower loaded to fish with my 240# partner than it is when it is completely empty & me driving solo. Most boats are. So yes it does have less of a tendency to chine loaded as it does when it is empty. I can drive it one handed while eating a breakfast taco when it is loaded down. When it is empty it requires Driver Input.

As you point out, all those things that add weight do not fix chine walk as much as they impact boat performance to the point the boat can't chine walk. Weight to horsepower ratio is a significant factor in most things performance-oriented, and in boating, it's a prominent one that's widely variable for any given setup. It's not uncommon for bass boat payload to vary by 700 pounds or more. That's quite an impact on the key ratio such that a boat that will air out in once case gets bogged down in another simply due to that weight change.

You guys make a good point that I haven't thought of, I have been driving the boat with only my tackle, myself, and full tank of gas. I didn't think to add water to the livewells, nor factor in my tournament partners weight and tackle.

I took my boat out this morning once it stopped raining, but it was still windy and I only had a stretch of good water the length of the bridge so I could only do so much. I lowered it a 1/2 notch from where it was. When I ran out of water I was running at 75.3, 6060 rpms and this time it started to chine walk at around 92% trim according to the gauge. I know with practice, like you guys have said, that I can learn to correct it, because if I had more good water to run I know I could have gotten it to 6100 rpms and probably around 76 mph or a little more which I think is perfect for speed, efficiency, fuel mileage etc.

I think what I am going to do is leave it where it is and wait for a good day, then run it with the livewells full and see what happens because I would assume that would be an additional 150lbs I'm guessing, and my partner weighs around 230lbs so I may be right where I need to be or actually may need to go up a tiny bit again.

Thoughts?

So here's my 2 cents worth. You add your partner & fill the wells and his tackle and you have just added close to 500#. What you will most likely observe is that you will have to Lower your jackplate to achieve max speed and even then it won't be 75.3. It'll probably be more like 71 if you're lucky.

The heavier the load the deeper you have to run the prop to lift the hull free of the water. Drag is what scrubs off speed. The lighter the load the higher you can run the motor/prop and still lift the hull.

I will also add this. When July arrives and it is 98 degrees with 90% humidity you will lose another 3-4 mph. Heat & humidity rob horsepower by as much as 15%. Also when the lakes' surface temp is 90, the water is less dense than when it is 60 so the hull sticks to the water's surface more. In other words, don't be surprised if your boat struggles to run 70 in July & Aug loaded just like you are today when you are running 75.

So true.... The fluid you use to propel yourself forward really matters. After Ken’s description you’re seeing the beauty of the hydraulic jack plate. The density of the water really declines in the summer and you’ll find yourself with the hammer down on tournament day wondering what happened.

The next time you’re out with your current set up, watch your bow carefully for a tendency to “fall off” to the right once you’re at those higher speeds and see if you can stop that. Pay attention to that subtlety and try to feel when you’re up on the pad and when the boat is trying to fall off of it.

Enjoy this process.... that’s what it’s all about.

Jackson


P.S. Flip...... Is it P-Factor in boats?

Not sure what the livewell capacity is on the FXR but figure 8.34#/ gal for water. Wouldn't surprise me if they held 35 gals or more total. Gas is about 6.3#/gal. It adds up quick.

Yes, p-factor is physics alive and well in boat propulsion also. Notice that some guys say they don't feel much pull in their steering (the thrust imbalance) until they start to trim out. Remember that p-factor is more prominent the higher the angle of attack. That's the engine trim in our bass boats. The more you trim out, the more the growing asymmetrical thrust will want to push the bow to one side. If you ran one of the counter-rotating outboards intended for large boats in pairs, you'd feel it in the other direction as everything is reversed. I bet that would be a weird feeling!

Race boat owners (and some guys who are big on running bass boats to the edge) play around with boat balance, and they come up with how many 25# bags of lead shot to add to the boat as ballast. Since racers are alone, that ballast is often placed opposite their seat across the centerline of the hull (think passenger seat floor area). The goal is to balance the boat's weight so that the hull balances level up on the port/starboard pivot point (keel). To this end, you may want to try filling only the passenger-side livewell first because this is across the centerline from your seat, and can help offset the tilt to the right caused by you alone in the boat.

IF you're TM isn't hard to remove (just the motor, leave the mounting bracket) - take a ride to the edge - take that TM off the bow and leave it ashore. Viewing your boat from the side, your transom is a fulcrum point with the outboard on one side, and a big long hull on the other. Think of this as a very lop-sided see-saw. The outboard is applying downward pressure on its' side to push the hull up in the air. A jackplate set-back lengthens the "see-saw" on the outboard side giving it more leverage to push the hull up in the air. Taking weight off the bow also makes it easier to lift the hull. There's a LOT less drag in air than in the water and that's why we want to "air out" a hull for the fastest performance. You will be amazed how differently that boat runs without that heavy hunk of metal sitting on the bow.

I can tell Flippin Out has messed with Allisons or some other high performance boat over the years.

One other function of the setback jackplate is to move the prop back into "cleaner" water. The water coming off the bottom of the pad is very turbulent. Setting the motor back 6-15" allows the prop to run in cleaner less turbulent water thereby allowing it to get a better bite. It is all about the efficiency of the propeller to obtain the best speed possible from whatever boat & HP motor you are running.

It sounds like Skeeter has done a good job with the new FXR hull. Getting 75 mph from a boat that heavy, that wide & that deep with a 250 is no small feat. To get a boat to run faster on topend you have to make mods to the running surface. Sometimes those mods affect the handling at high speed. This is not a bad thing. Ask him how he did the very first time he rode a bicycle without training wheels. My guess is he wobbled a bit then fell over like me.

My advice to your friend that is experiencing chine walk at top end is to bump the down button a couple times when it starts making him nervous. That puts more of the running surface down into the water and will make the boat settle down so he can drive it one handed like he is probably accustomed to with his previous Skeeter. Think of this as putting back on the training wheels. He may not run 75 but he will still get to the fishing hole okay at 70.

A dealer friend raced in an Allison. Another friend ran a Gambler. That Gambler would do 80 in tournament configuration on the right water. The Allison ran in the 90s if you had a good pucker factor.

Spoken like a guy that doesn't know. I've just read this post and I'm not going thru five pages. You're way over trimmed. A rooster tail shouldn't be any higher than your motor. Raising the motor actually takes the chine walk out.