[2dogsnight]

thank you Shawn,
I read Moyer Atomic 4 book I have, looking for answers, also learning about shaft packing.

Cooling system in my motor does not have a thermostat or coolant bypass.

Tomorrow I will take the packing nut out ( at low tide, sitting on tide land), will clean the shaft from graphite, use some light coat of grease on shaft before installing new packing. Packing nut temp. should be 30 - 40 deg over the cooling water temp, so no more than 100 deg. Packing nut should be hand tight to start. Interestingly no need to have water dripping out of packing nut as long as nut temperature is not more then 30-40 deg more than water

Will make small adjustment to oil pressure with spring loaded relief valve. According to the book oil pressure should be 40psi........oil pressure is slowly getting lower from 50psi down to 30, will go back to 40 with higher throttle, but after few minutes will go back down

I don't suspect that the timing is not right, as I have the boat going 17mph a week ago

.....starting thinking about getting an outboard again ......