I would stay on the conservative side unless you know for sure what the compression ratio is. Cast iron heads or aluminum? If aluminum, it can handle a little more compression. You can get a ball park estimate of the dynamic compression ratio of an engine with a compression check, but it is just a ball park. If it is pumping out 185+ PSI, you can assume a healthy compression ratio and/or a cam with little overlap.

Depends on the heads he is running. I built a 489 that dynoed at 585 HP with AFR 265 ovals, Dart oval single plane, 800 Holley and a relatively mild hyd roller cam. Heads can make a huge difference.

As others said, unless it has a very radical cam, there should be no reason you can't get it to idle at 800 - 900 RPM, or even less. High idle speed can be hard on a Bravo's clutches. Would be a good idea to find out more about the cam specs and the exhaust to find out how low you can go without worrying about reversion.

If nothing was done to the engine since it was last run in the boat, and it was running fine then, why would you have to change the timing? Was this thing dynoed?

Exactly , and why I said - "it's your motor."

The OP gave us absolutely no usable info for us . Garbage in - garbage out.

So....what ever we give for info is woprth as much as what was given for us....Not much.

Hey... it all about her...lol

Holly ?

Yeap!

Berry or Hunter,,maybe together.

How about Holly Peers

That works.