Carver Owners Forum

So our river is in flood, currently the river is flowing at 5-6 knots. The speed limit on the river is 6 knots, So when running upstream you are fighting a 5-6 knot current, therefore to attain a 6 knot over ground speed your hull is actually running at 11-12 knot hull speed, now that's not a problem for my boat, however the wake you produce is the equated to the hull speed, not the over ground speed. even slowing to 4 knots over ground speed you are still producing quite a wake.
On our river we have a number of liveaboards who do not move, (state of their boats they will never move again, apart from vertically down). So on Sunday I managed to upset one or 2. Not only me thought, about 1/2 mile ahead was another baot with the same issue. To make headway you have to run to a given speed.
Returning down stream you have the opposite problem, tickover on my engines, and I was running at 7 knots over ground, but the hull speed through the water was 2 knots, zero wake.

Just food for thought.

Interesting dilemma. You don't want to upset people but you need to do what you must to navigate safely. They're just going to have to understand that the only thing you can control is your boat, you can't change the conditions Mother Nature throws at you. I'm sure on a windy day, they'd want you to do whatever it takes to avoid crashing into their boat.

These situations come up once in awhile. Not much you can do about it except smile and wave. I ran into one this year where my bow rider was stalling below 1000 RPMs. I had to return to the dock slightly above wake speed and got yelled at by another boat owner tied up at the dock. I figured it was better to throw a small wake than to stall and possible hit another boat.

Had a very similar thing happen on the Ashley River - right off the main city marina in Charleston SC. Had to have a wake simply to have steerage heading upstream on an ebb tide. Got pulled over by the local law enforcement. Ticketed. Went to court, showed the judge tides and current charts (this was back in the early 80s) for the time of the incident. Judge threw out the ticket and told the police officer to use some common sense next time. I can only guess the judge was a boater too.