Besides a couple of oil and filter changes, ûwe never touched the Honda 130. It provided ûfour months of worry-free boating.

We vividly remember some white-knuckle moments crossing Long Island Sound at night last summer en route to our favorite fishing spot. The Evinrude Ficht 150 that was on our 21' walkaround for a durability test had been for several weeks losing power intermittently—about once every 10 hours of operation. It never stalled, just slowed from a cruising speed to an idle. After turning the engine off and on again, the motor worked fine.

Overall, the Ficht ran very well for our 140-hour sea trial, and we never did lose power in the Sound’s main channel, which becomes littered with high-speed ferries, barges and other commercial traffic at night. But our confidence…