On Nov 1, 11:15*am, Frogwatch wrote:
A friend of mine built a custom pontoon boat roughly 34' long with
beautiful woodwork. *It is powered with a 90 hp and he claims he had
the prop pitched by an expert. *He attains 18 mph so he is planing
some but gets very bad fuel economy, I'd estimate 1 mpg. *Underway,
most people sit on the foredeck so she probably is bow heavy. *Is
there some way to get her to plane better? *He does have one of those
Dol-Fin things on the motor but I think he needs more planing surface
along the pontoons.

Maybe one of these would be the ticket?

http://www.pontoonwaterglide.com/index.asp

Factory "performance" pontoons typically have lifting strakes which
help the toon plane. In their most basic form, think of taking angle
iron (a piece of L shaped metal) and welding it to each side of the
toons maybe a quarter of the way up the side, giving them some flat
sutface area on each side, thereby increasing the lift. That would be
tough to add to an existing toon.