Lofty, the Fountain of Youth is a heavy boat, at 9000+ lbs with a race load of fuel. We tried shorties over the summer, in search of a few more mph to be competitive on the OPA circuit. What we found was we simply needed more power.

Trying to run 4-blade hydro's, we didn't have enough blade surface area to get this heavy beast on plane... and my boat (as well as most straight-bottomed Fountains) likes a stern-lifting props. We tried 5-blade hydro's and Maximus's, but the boat just didn't have enough juice to turn them. Bravo props gave us the blade surface area to get on plane, but were a squirrely mess.

We have recently added a pair of dry-sump 510's, and we now have the power to revisit the shorties. We ran the longer lowers in Key West, simply because we knew this setup works, and with scrambling to get the new power rigged, we ran out of time for additional drive setup testing.

We'll be trying the shorties again next spring, running 5-blade props. I'll post results here to help keep the Konrad customer base informed on our progress. Bottom line is that every boat reacts differently to changes in prop shaft height... weight, lengh, power, and blade types are all factors in the equation, not to mention what your running surface looks like. It's just a matter of finding what works on a particular application, mosly with trial and error.

Hope this helps,
Brian