I bought an 18-foot switch in April. We love it. And I meet your speculation: I am a first-time boat owner.
The boat is great for family outings. But all the potentials for disaster are there as well. It is a very easy boat to operate but it is also easy to slip into operator error.
I was trying hard not to offend people who just want a little time on the water without aspiring to become nautical snobs. Still I think a boat marketed to entry level folks should not have complex handling demands.
During my first year as a Switch owner, I always erred on the side of caution. After learning more about my boat from you, I now know I was just being prudent. Thanks.
We use midsize pontoon boats for the race committee at our one-design sailing club in central Florida and they are perfect for that job. But I got the scare of my life when I stuffed the bows through a motorboat wake one day at planing speed and the entire foredeck went under water in the first stage of pitchpoling.
Growing up on Chesapeake Bay where there are few pontoon boats and then spending most of my sailing life on an ocean coast, I had no experience with these vessels and made the mistake of considering them perfectly safe on lakes and rivers. It is not so.
I think it will be hard to find one with enough reserve buoyancy in the bows to permit safe running at planing speeds in anything but glass-smooth waters and, in my opinion, taking any pontoon boat through a known hazard like Haulover Cut is suicidal.
BTW (2) — some of this potentially deadly behavior is likely due to the free-surface effect of rapid water movement in the partially filled pontoons under rapid deceleration. There was once a 20-foot Ray Hunt runabout that employed a keel chamber which would fill at rest and empty as the hull achieved planing speed, but that hull had sufficient reserve buoyancy to resist nose-diving if that tunnel remained partially filled during a hard deceleration. Probably the designers of this product are too young to have heard of Ray Hunt.
More than 50% of Americans cannot swim well enough to save their lives, according to the Red Cross. When you move outside of the caucasian group, it's higher by far as many of these people simply aren't exposed to the "outdoors" and water based recreation in their childhood.
Good reporting. It is a miracle this little girl didn't die. It seems that this is an incredibly dangerous design. All boats need to have the ability to stop quickly without pitchpoling.
I'm not a fan of anything open bow on big water, but watching rental pontoons on Lake Michigan, on days they really shouldn't be out there.. Anything with a flat deck tends to dive hard if you stuff the nose. Making a flat deck boat go fast if there's any chance of waves can't be a good thing, but the horsepower goes up every year.
I bought an 18-foot switch in April. We love it. And I meet your speculation: I am a first-time boat owner.
The boat is great for family outings. But all the potentials for disaster are there as well. It is a very easy boat to operate but it is also easy to slip into operator error.
I was trying hard not to offend people who just want a little time on the water without aspiring to become nautical snobs. Still I think a boat marketed to entry level folks should not have complex handling demands.
During my first year as a Switch owner, I always erred on the side of caution. After learning more about my boat from you, I now know I was just being prudent. Thanks.
BTW. You are a good writer.
I suspect we have both pumped out a few — likely millions — of words in our time.
We use midsize pontoon boats for the race committee at our one-design sailing club in central Florida and they are perfect for that job. But I got the scare of my life when I stuffed the bows through a motorboat wake one day at planing speed and the entire foredeck went under water in the first stage of pitchpoling.
Growing up on Chesapeake Bay where there are few pontoon boats and then spending most of my sailing life on an ocean coast, I had no experience with these vessels and made the mistake of considering them perfectly safe on lakes and rivers. It is not so.
I think it will be hard to find one with enough reserve buoyancy in the bows to permit safe running at planing speeds in anything but glass-smooth waters and, in my opinion, taking any pontoon boat through a known hazard like Haulover Cut is suicidal.
BTW (2) — some of this potentially deadly behavior is likely due to the free-surface effect of rapid water movement in the partially filled pontoons under rapid deceleration. There was once a 20-foot Ray Hunt runabout that employed a keel chamber which would fill at rest and empty as the hull achieved planing speed, but that hull had sufficient reserve buoyancy to resist nose-diving if that tunnel remained partially filled during a hard deceleration. Probably the designers of this product are too young to have heard of Ray Hunt.
Bravo, Peter, for reporting on this. BTW, I like your term “tame press”. Cheers!
More than 50% of Americans cannot swim well enough to save their lives, according to the Red Cross. When you move outside of the caucasian group, it's higher by far as many of these people simply aren't exposed to the "outdoors" and water based recreation in their childhood.
Good reporting. It is a miracle this little girl didn't die. It seems that this is an incredibly dangerous design. All boats need to have the ability to stop quickly without pitchpoling.
I'm not a fan of anything open bow on big water, but watching rental pontoons on Lake Michigan, on days they really shouldn't be out there.. Anything with a flat deck tends to dive hard if you stuff the nose. Making a flat deck boat go fast if there's any chance of waves can't be a good thing, but the horsepower goes up every year.