Welcome aboard Duckin! Good to see another SeaCraft addict in the local area! Trust me, lighter is better on the 20' hulls! That 2003 motor would have been made by BRP, and even it it's a Ficht, would be a much higher quality than a late 90's OMC motor. (This is first hand info from an engineering colleague of mine that was Chief Engineer at the Test Center in Stuart!)
I'm continually amazed by folks that think a 20' boat needs a 500 lb/250 hp motor! Carl Moesly designed the 19/20 ft. hulls in the mid-60's for the biggest outboard motors available at the time, i.e., the I-6 Merc and V-4 OMC, both of which weighed 300 lbs or less and put out something like 100-110 hp. That means the VDH hulls are designed to perform best with light and relatively low powered motors. He included a lot of subtle details in the design to achieve that, like a wedge built into the outer panels for low speed lift and rocker in the inner panels to allow bow lift at high speed. They're much more efficient and ride much better than the modern 8' wide 20' boats that are designed for 500 lb 4-stroke motors hanging on the transom! I was fortunate to have run my boat for over 30 years with a "spec" 300 lb/~100 hp motor, including a half dozen trips to the Abaco's with very heavy loads including lots of dive gear. I was frankly amazed at it's performance compared to newer larger boats with a lot more power. Although I had trouble staying up with the newer V-6 motors in flat calm conditions, once we got into the 2' square waves on the Bahama bank, my little 20' Seafari, with lots of gear loaded in the cabin, could easily stay up with the bigger boats in that nasty chop! When I added a bracket and repowered with a 427 lb motor in 2006, I had to do lots of tweaks (4B stern lifting prop and a Doelfin) to get back to the 12 mph planing speed and soft ride that I had with the original "as-designed" configuration! You might want to check out my post on the Pros & Cons of brackets in the Repairs/Mods section for more info! Denny
|