It's not so much of being "hung up" or "paranoid" as much as a local history (in my case) of historically seeing people getting "the book" thrown at them - and different "decals" unfortunately means nothing if the officials are diligent enough in their "quest" to check the motor part serial numbers to match those HP ratings (maybe they're too busy putting that forensic kind of energy into computer searches now-a-days, that I wouldn't know). Most of you are from areas where the "officials" probably have bigger things to worry about and overpowering is never an issue or concern as long as you're fairly "safe", or at least somewhat non-reckless about it.
I remember a local person (I didn't know him personally, but I know his name (his parents live just around the corner from us now), and I certainly got passed a lot by him while out in my old GT), anyway, he had a VERY fast tunnel hull (two mercury 200 BlackMaxs on the back. It was said that he could make it from Halder bridge to Moon bridge near us in under 7 minutes (and from what I witnessed on many occasions, I believe it). Obviously he was pushing the limits and "causing a disturbance" in some people's opinions (sometimes those "opinions" were probably just because he had really nice women on board all the time), but he challenged a lot of people to races too. So even though his boat was perfectly legal in all requirements for that model and engines, our local DNR eventually banned him from this flowage and insisted that he run bigger water such as over near Door County.
Of course we could argue entirely separately of the legalities on whether overpowering is safe on certain models (like the GT150) - sometimes it comes down to operation and sometimes design (and sometimes just blind luck). We've all seen (luckily rare) examples of even just steering linkages breaking under the strain and causing violent rollovers - throw in more power and chine walk, and it really does boil down to a certain percentage of skill over luck (and some of you who have "racing" in your blood maybe live for that sort of thing). Of course, sometimes it doesn't matter the size of boat...I've always heard reports (never was able to confirm if it was actually ours or not yet) that the 20' jet we beefed up with rebuilding everything for the ultimate performance (and the boat itself seemed pretty heavily built and able to take a lot) split in two and sunk during an impromptu race in southern WI a few years after it left the central WI area.
