A platform with a rotating crane resting on three adjustable floats in a tub has been built on laboratory scale. Controller design is studied to prevent the platform from leaning due to crane movements. The system dynamics can be described primarily by a simple sixth order linear model. Model errors are then due mainly to unmodeled effects of waves that are essentially linear transfers. It is precisely under these conditions that H8 design should perform well. Actual design and tests show that H8 controllers do not substantially outperform LQG designs combined with feedforward controllers, but the combination of both feedforward and feedback controllers can easily be obtained by H8 design technique