When I walk to the back of the boat know, its fine, its got a 20" transom and when free floating with no one aboard, its got a foot of transom out of the water. I put the battery and 6 gallon gas tank towards the port side to offset my weight.
Putting the battery up front may be a problem, the boat has no floor, its just an open hull. It measures 16" long with an 84" beam width. Its got three bench seats, the rear bench goes all the way across, the middle bench is split, with the console on the right half of that bench, and the front bench is split. There's a short closed bow area, about 20" but it only covers the tip of the bow area. There's no flat area below to set a battery. There's also no place to hide or run cables. As is it the side console has a steering cable that runs down the right rear, along with two shift cables and a kill switch wire. I'm basically sitting at the right rear of the boat on the rear bench seat, with the console ahead of me on the middle bench. The console sort of reaches rearward off that middle bench seat so it can be reached by the driver.
There are two flotation boxes on each side in the rear, they make the rear bench form a U shape with an opening in the middle between the seats and the transom. There's a bilge pump, fuel tank and battery in this area. There are folding seats for the driver and passenger, side by side on that rear bench.
One of the reasons I bought this boat was that my 14' boat was too small and couldn't take the weight of two guys and a 25hp motor. With its 15" transom, it was near swamping at rest with just the motor and two people in the boat. The gunwales would nearly roll beneath the water every time I landed a fish. This hull is very stable. I've been safely able to haul two people and a dozen crab pots and a days catch without any worries. The open center area makes moving around a lot easier.
Power and speed wise, 35hp is fine, the boat planes easily and has plenty of speed for where I run.
I have a seized up 35hp parts motor here with a good starter and bracket, I suppose I could just bolt that onto this motor and run a starter button somewhere, it don't have a charging system, but I only start and stop the boat half dozen times each day when I'm out and the battery gets charged when I get home. The size 27 deep cycle should have plenty of power for this.
Besides the Honda 35hp, I have a 1989 Evinrude 50hp two stroke here in real nice shape but my concern with that was that it would use more fuel, and not only add more motor weight but require me to carry a lot more fuel. With the 35hp, I can run all day on one 6 gallon portable tank and I keep a 3 gallon up front as a back up if needed. I've only needed the 3 gallon once and that was the day I brought the boat home. The old owner and I took the boat out fishing for the day, ran it all over the area where I bought it, plus I gave it a good workout to see how it handled, then I drove the boat from the ramp where he launched the boat with his trailer to another ramp where I had someone waiting with a new trailer about 30 miles away. I didn't run it out of gas but it was close to running the 6 gallon tank dry that day, I switched tanks about 10 miles from the marina where I was heading. Since then, its never burned more than 5 gallons in a day.
The 50hp was a bit hard on gas when it was on my Starcraft Super Sport, but that was a heavier boat by a few hundred pounds or so. I'd burn 8 to 10 gallons in a day on the water in that boat with the 50hp. The 50hp OMC also doesn't have tilt & trim..
The fact that the Honda has tilt and trim, plus the fact its likely to burn a lot less fuel was the main idea, along with not having to mix gas anymore.
The 35hp OMC is a good match for the boat size wise, both in hp and weight, What I'm afraid of is that adding the extra weight of the Honda, or even the 50hp OMC would offset most if not all the hp gains in lost fuel economy and freeboard. I don't want a boat that's barely afloat at rest, I've been there before and its no fun. I had a similar boat with a 135hp on it about 30 years ago, although that boat had no battery or electric start to deal with. It was fast but it was never more than 3" from swamping with that motor. If I pushed it off the beach on the lake too fast it would take water over the transom. Adding my weight at the stern on the tiller made it downright dangerous but it was fast. Once it was up on plane it flew across the top of the water but taking off was a little scary, The prop wash during a full throttle take off would evacuate all the water from beneath the boat and the hull would sink beneath the surrounding swell of water before it moved forward. I suppose if you were to have backed out of the throttle at that point the boat would have swamped.
That boat is what turned me onto these hulls, that boat was a bit longer and a few years older than the one I've got now and without the split bench options but the abuse it stood up to back then really amazed me. It was old enough not to have a HP or weight placard on it but all in all it took that 35hp well. I have no idea what top speed was but it was scary fast.
40 years later I'm a bit more cautious, I have no interest in speed but I hate a boat that won't get on plane or one that isn't balanced right.
I do see a few of these on the water here with older 50hp Mercury motors on them, and they seem to handle that just fine. Who ever sold these must have been outfitting these with Mercury motors back then. Mine supposedly came new with the OMC 35hp though. There are no holes drilled in the transom, so my options are open when it comes to fitting another motor.
