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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Still Afloat" data-source="post: 497409" data-attributes="member: 32426">Well, the ice is finally off of the lakes and I took the little tinny out for the first time. It’s a Lowe 1448M, mod V Jon with a Merc F25ELH Jet. It‘s still a bare hull at this point and as expected it was tail heavy. Once the decks are on it, fuel, batteries and trolling motor up front it should help balance things out quite a bit. I raised the motor 1” above the transom with a piece of 1 x 2” square aluminum tube which put the front top edge of the intake even with the bottom of the hull.  The motor has manual trim and it was trimmed all the way forward.  The hole shot had the bow shooting for the sky but it got on plane and ran about 22 mph at wot with no sign of cavitation. This was on a lake with a slight breeze and glassy to a lightly rippled water. The boat was squirrelly has heck and it wanted to drive like snake swims.  It was a real handful and I was being cautious because it felt like it could easily veer sharply and flip or just eject me from the boat. That could get real bad, real quick in the ice cold water.  If the motor had power trim I would have trimmed up but, with it sitting heavy in the stern I didn’t want to attempt a hole shot with the motor manually trimmed any higher. Any thoughts on the stability issue? Was this bow steer or was it just the center of gravity too far astern?  Or both?</blockquote>