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Interesting data. It's a little bit hard to tell what's going on there, as you were varying both pitch and blade area. Your original 3-blade presumably had less blade area than the 4-blade props, yet was slow to plane - I can't figure out what would cause that combination of symptoms. In general, I would have thought that a 4-blade prop is exactly what you don't want on a "not overpowered" boat, especially with a 4-stroke that makes its horses well up in the RPM range.

You may want to consider another tack, that being less blade area (meaning back to a 3-blade) and lower rake to increase stern lift. I followed that path with my F70 on my 15 and ended up with a PowerTech SCD3, which is a semi-cleaver, low rake design - the results were dramatic (in a good way).

I don't know what the corresponding prop would be in the Merc lineup, if you are interested in staying with the Merc brand; perhaps Finnegan can advise.

Tim