On Tue, 07 Oct 2003 20:47:28 -0400, Harry Krause
wrote:
IF the motor is properly attached to the transom, my guess is that he's
got a problem on the bottom of the boat, as mentioned. A 10 hp outboard
is more than sufficient to move a 12' skiff up on plane properly so it
is running with a bit of bow rise.

================

It didn't sound like getting on plane was an issue, but once he did,
the bow came down and started to dig in instead of staying up a
little. As other have speculated, that could be caused by a hook in
the hull shape (either static or dynamicaly induced by water
pressure), or possibly by the propeller being too far underwater and
trying to lift. It could turn out that the boat was just not designed
to run at planing speed and will need some fiddling around to get it
there.

When I was a kid on Lake Ontario my brother and I had a lightly built
14 foot wooden row boat which we powered with a 7 1/2 hp Merc. It was
never designed to run on plane of course, but it would with that Merc.
You could watch the bottom of the boat flex however and the dynamics
were constantly changing as a result. When we took it out solo we'd
put a 30 pound rock in the bow to hold it down.