Is there any kind of valve between the jet pump and motor? You could be over pressurizing (Sp?) your motor, causing gaskets to fail.

83 ,there cou;d be a "multitude" of reasons for the mikly oil , not the least of  ... did you run the motor on the "hose" before you went to the lake ? ' if you said I missed it , does your boat have thru hull exausts, 4 tube headers or OT pipes ? if thru hulls are you missing flappers? if headers how are they plumbed (don't be shypost up ) Like GT says did the simply "milk" or did the oil level actually increase (critical) any nrecent wotk to the boat ? like any investigation the more info you provide even if seemingly insignificant is important Tom

BTW the water in the bilge would have to be above the bottom of the crank to backfeed into the crankcase

GT, (1)the oil level is not much higher than when i first checked it. If any at all it would have to be a very small amount higher. (2)the engine did get time to warm up as we did about 6 hours on the lake that day ranging from cruising at 3000 rpm's to running pretty good @ 5000 rpm's.

Jet boat performance, Yes i did run the boat on the hose before we went to the lake. I have thru hull exhaust and brand new flappers were installed before the trip. The exhaust is bassically under water at idle/float but with that much pressure coming out i would never emagine that water could make its way in. There has not been any recent work on the boat.

Do you think that 6-8 inches of water would be enough to be above the bottom of the crank? At first i thought maybe i have a blown head gasket, but if I am not mistaken, with a blown head gasket I would have bad compression on at least one cylinder and the motor would sound as if it were missing right?

Now that i know i need to change my oil, i think i need to pull my motor to drain the oil. Correct me if I am wrong, but it does not look as if my boat has one of the oil drain tubes installed.

BTW Colby welcome to the fun

My question is did you change the oil when you bought it?  Do you have anyway of telling how long that oil was in the engine if not? 

You may just have to do the oil change the old fashion way, drain it in the bottom of the boat and out the boat drain plug.  Flush the bottom of the boat with a mix of water and simple green and you're good to go.

I had an edelbrock torker on my last engine for 9 years, the corrosion is no issue on it from fresh water running.

Good luck

A little late but, I've got a "cheap trick" for ya', I have used this trick on houseboats for years, might help someone.

Get yourself an oil pump primer (you can also make one from an old distributor) index/mark the distibutor and pull it, install the oil pump primer and hook to a good 1/2" drill motor, pull the oil pres sending unit and install a 1/8" pipie nipple and attatch a hose to pump the oil into a bucket, fire off the drill and away goes the "black and nasty"(boy that doesn't sound right) . You can also use this method to "flush" water out of the oil if the boat sinks.

Hope it helps someone.

Good to hear you are back up and running.

Another trick for dumping oil. Get a heavy trash bag and slide it under the pan as if you were going to bag the motor. open the plug and let her rip. When it is drained, you can slide out the bag with minimal mess, and some times none if you are good at it.