The cobra is one of the designs that uses a portion of the thrust to lift the hull.

A pto is doable, and certainly could be interesting. I'm looking at a toothed belt arrangement on a water prop boat and the speed thing is an unknown for this drive method, they specify a tensile force but apparently not a speed, so the centrifugal (or is it centripetal?) force on the belt is probably the limiting factor. For this purpose I'm guessing plodding four stroke engine better than a screaming stroker.