buster53 wrote:Source of the post Doesn’t matter what others feel comfortable with…only matters what you are comfortable with. My tolerance for rough water may be completely different from yours.
This, absolutely. The boat can probably handle a whole lot more than you think, but it's not going to be a fun ride. Also depends on who you're with and their tolerance and comfort.
Also depends a lot on direction, speed and the period of the swells. If you're going straight into them then you might be pounding through them or gently going up and over them, vs if they're beam seas and rolling the boat side to side.
Had a friend with a 39' aft cabin. His wife was horrified anytime the boat took a beam sea and rolled a little bit. She always thought it was going to roll over. Most of the time they were boating in 12-14' and I tried to ease her mind a bit by telling her if the boat ever sank, she could just stand on it and be out of water (for the most part). That didn't help much. Funny thing was she was a pretty good swimmer and also didn't have any trouble taking their dingy out alone even with some chop out on the lake.