Re: Prop/Speed Question
When I'm on a plane, everything feels fine in terms of how the boat is riding. It seems to be pretty level, but I don't feel like its stuck to the water, riding low, if that's what you mean. It responds to trim really well and everything.
I've checked the throttle and it definitely opens up all the way. When flushing the engine on land, I can easily rev up to 5000-6000 rpm so I know that's not an issue. The motor got a clean bill of health about 4 months ago when all the carbs were rebuilt, sparkplugs changed, and a bevy of other maintenance was done.
You bring up an interesting point regarding water in the foam under the floor however because I checked this morning and there is about 1"-2" of water sitting in the hull between the areas of foam that I can see. This got me thinking- is this why when I take the fins off the engine my stern rides so deep in the water? Because when I'm holing all that water in the hull rushes to the back and doesn't let the boat level out. I also noticed another alarming thing that I hadn't noticed before- at the bottom of my V, where the hull makes contact with the sand when I beach it, I noticed there's no paint left, no gelcoat left, and you can see the glass fibers. About a 1/2" by 1' strip of bare fiberglass basically. All seems sturdy still but I know that water can seep through exposed fiberglass, right? Could this be how my hull has slowly been filling up?
But its only a 15'3" boat, how much water could really be in there? Enough to weigh it do so much as to lose this much speed? I wish I could weigh the damn thing and find out how much over factory weight it is.
EDIT: I've done some research on this matter and apparently something as small as a 13' whaler can hold 700lbs of water if all the foam is soaked, so this could be some very bad news for me. When I get home tonight I'm going to take a core sample of the foam and see just how bad it is. In the meantime, I will ShopVac out all the standing water in there. If it becomes apparent that the foam is soaked, I think I've more than likely found the source of my performance problems, since this would easily be 100's of pounds of added weight. If that is the case, I will start a new thread in the proper forum. But any insight into experience you might have regarding water in small hulls would be appreciated.