[Fr. Frank]

My two cents: Stick with a single unless you're going to go big on the twins. That's a lot of weight cantilevered out behind the boat. I've owned two 23's with twins, but neither with a bracket. I rigged out another for a customer.

Back in '1984 I rigged my '77 23' SF with twin 235 Evinrudes. The boat was barely self-bailing with no one on board. As soon as I stepped onto the boat, I had water on the deck. I sold the boat to the Town of Palm Beach for their police department.

The same year, after re-coring and raising the deck, we re-powered a customer's '23 Savage with twin 3.4 Mercury 275's. (The boat was placarded for 600hp max HP). But there was still 1100 lbs hanging off the stern. It would not hold plane below 18 mph until we added Bennett trim tabs, which required limiting the downward/forward trim of the motors.

In 2003, I rigged a '74 23' Tsunami (Scepter) with twin 140 Johnson counter-rotating loopers for one of my parishioners who was replacing a single 235. After lots of time spent propping, he settled on 15"p Stilletos so that he could get on plane with a single motor with an average load. It was a pig with lipstick. Top speed was only 35 mph and it took 4 seconds to plane, getting less than 1.3 mpg. I bought it from him after a year and re-powered back to a single Evinrude 225 FICHT, getting 2.2 mpg with a top end of 39 mph. It took a little longer to plane, but I was okay with that.