Dr. Bob,
Nice to hear from you! You actually looked at our boat in Pensacola after our unfortunate incident with the marina nearly sinking our boat. Well, the boat is now in Minnesota as are we and our days on the ICW and Pensacola Bay watershed will be limited for the foreseeable future. However, we have quite a bit of water up here in Minnesota. The boat will live on Lake Minnetonka for now and eventually move up to Lake Superior in the next few years once our kids are big enough to manage a 4 hour one way commute.
Anyway, we went with a smaller displacement motor because our five year boat plan doesn't really include any large passages, fully weighted down adventures or ocean currents. Like most things we tried to make a purchase that fit our needs and for hull speed cruising on the lake and Mississippi River in a lightly packed boat with our two small kiddos. We figured that the 140 would suit our needs.
We only had 683 hours on the 135, pretty devastating and unexpected. We spoke to a boat mechanic and he said the issues we were experiencing was do to a cracked head. He also said a rebuild would be close to 10k and the 140 was just over 13.
I expect that the boat will have similar economy (5mpg) and a likely cruising speed of around 18-20 MPH just a bit over what our 135 would do in ideal conditions. Thank you for your input on the propeller!
Thanks,
R&R