What makes a boat (all boats) run smooth, in rough water, is called "deadrise". Deadrise is the angle, at the transom, or pad, that goes from the center of the pad to the gunwhale. Look at the back of your boat and imagine this angle. A true deep "v" deadrise is anything above, say, 21 degrees. All Allison hulls have true, deep "v" deadrise. Weight doesn't matter except it keeps your speed potential down. When one goes faster and hits a deflection, the deflection speed is faster. A tuna boat seems like it is riding fairly smmoth in a tough sea state because it is going 4 knots. Speed that tuna boat up to 70 knots and see how she does. Length of the keel line matters if the longer length lets one span the period of the waves. If the period of the waves is too lang for one's keel centerline, one must jump the trough in order to stay dry. The difference between a 21'boat and a 20' boat is one foot. A one foot difference helps in minute circumstances. Now if one was going to compare a 20' boat to a 30' boat, the circumstances where 10' additional would help would be significant.
Allison boats ride better than any other bass boat because of deep "v" deadrise, pure and simple. The rest is up to the driver, especially if the wave period is greater than the keel centerline length. When this occurs it is incumbent on the driver to jump the troughs: if one can master this, one can run big water. Too much engine offset is your enemy in these circumstances---the boat must be only slightly transom biased with its weight distribution, otherwise the trough jumping becomes a bow launching debacle.
froggy
