Look at it this way. The antique outboards of the 1930s came from the factory with a built in fuel tank that would run the motor about an hour at wide open throttle. (This varies by boat design and load.) A 5.4 horse Zephyr held 7/8 of a gallon, a 9.7 horse Lightfour held 1-1/4 gallons, a 22 horse Speeditwin held 2-1/-2 gallons, a 33 horse Speedifour held 4 gallons. (Same tank was used on the 50 HP Big Four & Racing 460) Our Big Four got about an hour and fifteen minutes on a tank. Plotting a course around the lake, I was getting a little over 13miles to the gallon.
I recall getting around 3 hours on our 25 horse Big Twin. I felt that that was about right. We had three tanks, two in the boat and one on the dock. We usually ran 3 or 4 hours after breakfast, then stop for lunch, then wait an hour to let lunch settle and then go out again. If the weather was nice, we came in when it started to get dark.
Dad had gotten two telephone poles. one was cut in half and set in concrete with about 5 feet sticking out. The other pole was mounted between them and held in place with a couple lengths of 1-1/4" pipe. A ten foot 2X4 was bolted to a notch five feet down from top of the pole and four lights were mounted on it forming a square. A flood light was mounted about half way down to aluminate the dock. When lit at night it looked from the lake like a bright light over a dim light. We could always find our way home . . . 😆
