M Winther - 2/24/2015 8:03 PM

horsepower is a measure of how quickly the available torque can be applied...motors with the same amount of torque but different horsepower can do the same job, just not at the same pace. when starting a boat from a dead stop, the difference is often nominal when measured in seconds-to-plane. when measured in percentages, the difference becomes more apparent.

for me, a 1 second difference in time to plane isn't a big deal because it's still a short amount of real time and i'm not usually in that much of a hurry. however, when running in genuinely heavy waves where i'm working the throttle to manage things safely, any lag in accelerating the boat becomes much more important - so give me the motor that applies the torque faster (ie., the one with more horsepower) every time.