200 YAMAHA on 23' SeaCraft

[kmoose]

Originally Posted by SnafuFishTeam

That must have been awesome!

The instantaneous time to plane was pretty cool but handling degraded very quickly if you put it to the wood. If more time would of been spent on set up I believe it could of been fun but all in all you couldn't use but half of what he had 95% of the time. That said he sold it to me shortly after for pursuit of another project where I mounted the df 250 I had.

As captbone has stated, set up is everything and horsepower needs are more dependent on an individuals use, load and average sea conditions they will be operating in. In my case most of my trips include 4 persons, 8-10 steel scuba tanks, associated gear, 400lbs. of ice, and 140 gals of fuel to run offshore 40-60 nautical miles. I can guaranty the i4 f200 would not be remotely sufficient to maintain the speed or load handling capabilities required for such a trip. It doesn't mean the same boat wouldn't be fine with that engine for other duties but certainly not mine.

I have a relatively long history with my current Tsunami even though I was not the owner the entire time I have dove off of it. When another good friend of mine owned the boat we utilized it for the exact same load I do now but the trips were longer (100 nautical one way). The power on the boat at that time was a 275 Evinrude. The motor did an ok job with the load but it was hard to find room for all the plastic fuel jugs required as I don't think you could pour fuel and oil overboard faster than it would burn it at a 25 kt cruise.

There has also been a lot of talk on here about top speed. Sure, its fun to have a boat capable of a 40+ knot top end speed but avg. capable cruise speed under the particular users load requirements at a reasonable fuel burn is where the sweet spot is. That said, for me and what I require, 250 hp is the minimum at which I would be happy with. This in turn drives most of my opinions in discussions such as this because most who ask "is this a good motor option?" do little to disclose their requirements for load and cruise speeds. Maximum speeds seen by a particular motor on an empty or lightly loaded boat in the intercostal really don't mean much to me.

"Repower Regret" Been there done that. If you ever do it once you won't do it again. If you really want to be unhappy about spending money on a repower go with the smallest motor you can convince yourself will be sufficient. If you get it wrong and miss the apex you will likely see no better if not less fuel economy and certainly less load handling capabilities than if you whould with an extra available 50 ponies... not squeezed or factory fudged hp from the largest brother of a series of smaller displacement engines.