[bj]

I think the 21 handles the rough stuff very good. I have to trailer about 45 miles to fish and sometimes it is blowing a lot more than expected when I get there,so I have fished on some days when it was easily 4-5'. I fished in a king tourney when it was 5-7'. Needless to say it was no fun but the boat handled it fine. That day we tried the beach for 2-3 hrs.with no luck and decided to run off about 15 miles. Even with the very rough conditions we were able to run over 20 mph but we got wet. If you do decide on a 21' be sure to get the tabs. It makes a big difference You can put the nose down and run in a good chop without any pounding at all. I think it is one of the best riding 21's out there. I talked to a guy at a boat show who sea trialed a 21 Regulator and the 21 SC on the same day and he said the SC had a much better ride. He bought the 21 SC. I think the roll at drift is not bad for a deep vee. The variable deadrise helps with this. As for speed the top end is around 42-44 depending on load. The fastest per the gps has been about 45-46. I really don't know what my best cruise speed is but probably around 30-32. I usually run as fast as the conditions will allow and don't worry much about the mpg since as long as I don't run wide open and keep it below 5000 rpm the mpg is not all that different at various rpm's. I have the 200 EFI which is not the optimax. The optimax is Mercs direct fuel injection and I believe it would probably get at least 50-75% better gas mileage than mine.