We have a channel or cut here that connects Lake Erie to Presque Isle Bay. It is a no wake zone, however it is also a bottleneck which squeezes together all manners of boating traffic from jet skis and bass boats to tall ships and 1,000 foot freighters. it is roughly 100 or so yards wide by maybe an 1/8 mile long, with concrete walls on both sides. With the prevailing winds from the West, it also acts as an enormous funnel which I have always refused to sail through because there are enough navigation issues and distractions. Like most other places I suppose, there are those boat operators that are aware of their craft and how they can affect others around them and those that are just dumb asses.

At both ends of the channel you have powerboats that are slowing down and others that are getting up to speed, just those times where a wake is the biggest. With the large seawalls on both sides the wakes also reflect back into the channel and add more confusion to the sea state. The most difficult to deal with are the larger powerboats that throw up wakes in the 3-5' range with little regard to any other boats around them. Where ever we have sailed in the past I have always tried to take wakes by quartering through them. Doing that here we still get pretty knocked around, sometimes the dishes are out of the lockers when it is all over. It is usually impossible to take them more bow on because of the amount of traffic around going in both directions, as an experiment I even tried on the beam hoping to go up and over, using the keel as a roll break(no, that didn't work).

Question is, what can I try different this year? I would really like to lessen the trauma of traversing the channel.