I've got to get out of here, but something else I thought of for your boat...

My dad has a boat he built years ago... the Sterling 42" Chris Craft 42' Corvette. It's got an O&R Compact in it... which I think was a 1 cu.in. engine (2-stroke gasoline mix) rated at 1 HP. The boat is tremendously overpowered... really stands up on its tail and runs like crazy. So your Homelite engine is 80% more displacement than that. I figured I'd pass that on just as a data point that says you don't have to worry about having plenty of power!