Been watching these guys fish this big water the last few weeks and deal with these
big waves and the beating their boats take.

What kind of long term damage (any?) do these guys do to their hull structure and
Long term hull (transom?) stability by beating the carp out of their boats like they do?

I have a 25 year old boat and I get worried every time I face 2 footers that my motor will
just one day break right off due to age of hull and the tension put on the transom.

Boat guys-do big waves and their pounding cause structural integrity issues with these
modern bass boats? 25 year old bass boats?

Curious?

In a word, Yes. It is unlikely your motor will break off but I can tell you from experience that running across big water in any boat, no matter the age, can be detrimental especially in an older boat that may have wooden stringers.

Modern day top of the line boats are built much better than they were 25 years ago. Fiberglass flexes as you run across big waves. That is normal. This can cause the stringers to come loose from the bottom of the hull. Most of the boat builders used a "chopper gun" to literally spray fiberglass cloth and resin into the molds 20 years ago. This is a tool that would pull fiberglass rope off a spool and chop it into pieces about 1" long while mixing it with resin. Then a guy would spray this mixture into the mold around the wooden stringers & cross members to build the hull.

Yes even the premium Arkansas boat builders did it. It saved time & labor opposed to hand laying fiberglass cloth then hand rolling the resin and cloth into place around the wood.

They also used wooden 2X4's & 2X6's for the stringers & cross members in the construction of their boats. This was common practice. In 1997 Earl Bentz introduced Triton as the "World's First Wood Free" bassboat. I worked their booth at the Dallas Boat Show that year and we had a piece of firewood in the boat with a sign that said, "This is the only wood in this boat"

You can imagine what happens to a piece of wood that gets soaked with water then sits 20 years. Even utilizing a "hand laid" process during boat building it was very difficult to ensure all the wood was completely encapsulated in fiberglass. If you have ever knocked off a piece of gelcoat on the bottom of your boat by idling thru the stumps or getting up on a metal tee post it creates a breach in the outer protective layer of the hull. Then as you run down the lake the flexing of the hull and the force of the water gradually peels more & more gelcoat off the boat, allowing water to get in behind the gel and into the fiberglass. Depending on the porosity of the fiberglass, now you have water intrusion.

You may not notice any issues for years. Then one day you notice there is a puddle under your boat after the trailer bunks are dry. You take it to a fiberglass repair shop and they lift it off the trailer. At that moment you recall the day you got stuck on a tee post in Birch Creek 5 yrs prior and had to use the big motor to get off. You went on and finished your day then put the boat on the trailer and forgot about it. For 5 years......

The FG guy tells you he is going to have to pull the entire top of the boat off the hull and completely rebuild your stringer system due to 70% of the wood being rotted. Then he hands you an estimate for $16,000.00 for your 20 year old boat that is worth maybe $20K.

That may be TMI but I have been down this road and experience is the best teacher.

Baby your 25 year old boat and it will last.
Nothing will last very long at all if it is abused and misused!

Ranger.... enough said

No bass built is designed or intended for use in big (4 ft >), rough water.

Boat might handle big water but I’m not!

I agree 100%. When folks ask me how my BassCat handles rough water, I tell them "horribly". Truth is all bass boats suck when it gets really rough, Cats, Rangers, Champions, all of them suck on rough water. All these guys bragging about running Falcon or Rayburn 50 mph in 4 footers must use the same tape to measure those waves as they do their peckers. My Cat has held up to the bashing far better than I have.

Just gotta know what your equipment is capable of and what it's limits are... I've been on Erie in the morning and the surface is like glass... Then come mid-afternoon it's 3-4 foot rollers... Nice and easy, nice and easy... The second you feel comfortable is when you take a bath... Dan

So I’m not the only one with that tape measure..... Good to know!

I’ll put a Malibu wake boat or a 3ft roller up against any Ranger, any day. 😜

home depot carry those tape measures?

asking for a friend.

running too hard in rough stuff is what stress cracks are made from.

glass flexes somewhat and beating it in rough water will flex things you don't want flexed over time.

and I agree, I see a lot of boats that claim to run the biguns, doubt most have seen really rough.


hit texoma on a strong south wind day, fork can suck bad with a strong north wind, haven't been on them but according to y'all rayburn and t bend can be something else. point is, over 2' and you are either easing thru it or working on cracking some glass.

So. If I’m reading this right... if I bought my tape measure at Home Depot, my boat wouldn’t have all those stress cracks?

That’s what I’m drawing from this.

dam skippy!