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The pad, is only a must, if your goal is top speed. When my (black) boat is running at top speed, it's only running on about 3 square feet of hull, the boat "airs" above 55 mph. It's truly fun. The pad isn't a necessary mod. Extending the strakes have an overall benefit, imagine that it's like putting trim tabs on the boat. I've noticed benefits at all planing speeds. If you look at the standard 15 hull with no mods, running, the shape of the hull in the water is a cylindrical wedge. Extending the strakes gives the wedge shape running/planing edges. The pad we created for the black boat, lifts the hull another 6" out of the water at high speed. If you estimate the running surface area and drag associated with the three design mods, the original ran on about 12 SF, the strake mod reduced that to around 6 sf, and the pad further decreased it to 3 sf. Essentially it's many times less drag. My engineer could figure it out, but I have no idea. I also saw this done on another 15 in SC that was dark blue. After I read his story and saw his pictures of mods, he was definitely on the same path we took, but the pad designs were pretty different. His pad was a bump, and if the boats bow would bounce, the leading edge of the pad had the chance to dive into the water. I'll post some pad pics if I can find some.
http://i1320.photobucket.com/albums/u...3b07a9.jpg
http://i1320.photobucket.com/albums/u...dd078c.jpg