Took a buddies 525 2008 38' Lightning out for the first ride today. What a difference there is between his boat and my 2000 38'. We made a pass today WOT and in the high 80's and low 90's the boat exhibited a strange tendency to hop. It wasn't a bow hop like a porpise, it was a full boat hop. It had a regular cadence and wasn't violent. Water was glass smooth. Trim was around performance report settings (4) and made little difference in either direction. Tabs were neutral. It was nothing detrimental to handling or safety but definitely noticeable. Anyone noticed similar?

glass smooth water would be my guess..

I was certainly thinking the same thing but didn't want to be missing something on the learning curve with the boat. It's 5x more sensitive to tab/trim changes than my side by side so I wanted to make sure I wasn't be ignorant.

What props is he running?

Had a 2003 42' Lightning with staggered 575s, 2" short sportmasters, and Maximus props that did the same thing in dead calm water at WOT. The boat hated it, and if you kept trimming for speed, the hop would get fairly violent. Drop the trim and tab a bit and the boat would tame down, but this would also scrub some mph.

My conclusion was that the flat water did not allow the boat to get proper bow lift, and that coupled with the extra stern lift from the 5 blade Maximus would result in the hop. Basically, as the bow was trying to lift, the stern would lift and drive it back down causing the boat to feel like it was hopping or bucking.

This can probably be fixed by some prop work - less stern lift. We never went that route, though, because the boat was on rails once the water had a little chop.