Re: how to rise the bow
If your boat is getting up on step and planing ok, but not trimming the bow up once on plane, you may not be getting enough trim angle out of your outboard/transom design combination.<br /><br />Not sure what boat you have, but most boat hulls have a 10-15 degree transom angle, with 12 degrees being common. If your angle is greater than 12 degrees, you may need to shim the transom/outboard combo with a tapered plate or something.<br /><br />It would be interesting to know what your transom angle is. You can measure your transom angle using a little trig.....<br /><br />Measure the distance along the boat's transom from the point where the outboard rests on the transom to the bottom of the keel (lowest point on boat bottom). Next, make sure the boat is level and tie a weighted object on a string and hang it from the same point on the transom where the outboard rests. The weight should hang down toward the ground, but not touch. You can use tape to hold the string. Next, place a straight edge along the bottom of the hull keel. Make a mark on the string where the straight edge touches the string. Then measure the length of the string from where the outboard rests to the mark on the string from the straight edge. Try to be exact, say to 1/10 of an inch.<br /><br />The measurement along the transom/hull will be your hypotenuse length. The measurement along the string will be your adjacent length.<br /><br />Since cosine = adjacent/hypotenuse, you can easily find the "X" angle by taking the inverse cosine of the adjacent angle divided by the hypotenuse.<br /><br />For example, lets say the measurement along the transom hull is 20.8" and the measurement along the string is 19.9"....<br /><br />cosine of X angle = 19.9/20.8<br /><br />so, X angle = inverse cosine of .9567307<br /><br />X angle = 16.92 degrees.....maybe more than your Mariner's trim adjustments can handle (for example).
