Re: Johnson Super Seahorse 35???
That will all depend on the boat. Really. The boats built back in the time that that 35hp motor were designed around it. They performed really, really well with a 35hp motor. Since then, boats have changed, and a mid-60's design (probably some sort of trihull) is heavier, longer, and wider. They don't perform as well with a 35 as the older boats did.
That said, your RDS-20, on an appropriate boat, will pull a couple of skiiers...no problem. I don't know what your boat is, but I do know that some of the nice aluminum runabouts perform really well with a 35 hp. A 15' or 16' runabout from the early 60's will sing with that outboard.
The thing about the OMC 35 horse big twins is that they have oodles of low RPM torque, which is perfect for skiing (among other things). They pull like crazy at lower RPMs.
Back when I was a teenager, the OMC 35s were the prime motors for water skiing. The Mercs would run faster, but they weren't as good at getting the skiiers up an on top of the water.
I actually learned to ski behind a 13' glass over plywood boat with a Johnson 25hp Big Twin. That little boat was a mostly flat-bottomed thing, very wide in the beam, and it would pull two teenagers up on double skis, and me, alone, up on the primitive slalom skis of 1962.
So, what boat is this 35 on? If it's a period boat, you'll have no trouble pulling skiiers behind it.
