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Old 01-25-2008, 08:38 PM
Chip Hindes Chip Hindes is offline
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Pretty much what Mike B said. The motor will come to temp more quickly and more evenly if you run at idle in neutral only until it runs smoothly with the choke off, then move out and run under low to moderate load until it comes to full temp. The only exception to this would be if, because of wind, current, traffic or whatever, you'll be forced to run full load, max RPM as soon as you drop the lines. In that case, warm it up fully first.

It never occured to me your boat was in the water. Makes a little more sense than before. You could put it in gear and run it against the lines to speed the warmup under load, but my personal feeling is if you're not going to run it for real, you'd be better off winterizing it and leaving it for the season.

Does the water your boat is floating in freeze? The motor will be at most only a few degrees colder than the water around the boat, so if not, antifreeze may not be required. In this case as well, one of those WM pancake dehumidifiers may be all you need, and they're pretty inexpensive. If the water around the boat does freeze, then you will need freeze protection; as I noted above I'd do the winterization and be done with it for the season, but if you insist you need to start it up frequently, I'd go for the block heater controlled by a thermostat rather than constantly blowing out and replacing antifreeze.
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'74 Newport 30' S/V "Scarlett"
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