Smoking due to rubber burning? Or did water get on it. Generally
exhaust can be hot but it should not be so hot that you can't hold your
hand on it for a few seconds.

Your cooling water is dumped into the exhaust after it cools the
engine. 1997 is long enough that if you have had nothing replaced
things could be starting to fail. It would depend on hours and amount
of fresh water verses salt water use. The hot exhaust combined with
water corrodes the exhaust system and that sometimes results in pieces
clogging it. You did not say what the engine temp was. If the engine
was overheating that tends to also cause the exhaust to overheat.

Northstar wrote:
97 OMC 115JTED (NorthStar Blast) shut down after running a few minutes of
tubing, engine
cover taken off to notice a smoking hot, pressurized rubber exhaust tube
running from muffler to exhaust port on transom? Any ideas what might have
caused this? Was able to restart after a few minutes and ran well. No beep
alarm sounded either.