Don't underestimate your boat, my granddad fished the rivers and on good days the ocean out to the old lightship in a 14 ft. Tollycraft windshield wood boat. 16 ft. was a popular size at the fishing camp we fished out of at Chinook, WA. Rarely was a boat over 19 ft. Because there wasn't the big engines back than, so they ran twin engines. Later he bought a no name plywood cabin cruiser, 18 ft. and bought the brand new Johnson V-4 75 hp Sea Horse, a real monster compared to todays motors, but that boat would easily outrun all the others. My boat since 1996 has been my Duckworth 16 ft. Open sled, I may get a bit wet at times but it runs the Columbia just fine, including the gorge. In the Coast Guard back in the stone age, we used the Boston Whaler 13 ft. to change out our 3 man crews, don't ever remember feeling scared or under boated doing so, on the smaller ships during and after the Vietnam War we used those to do boarding parties, all conditions. The secret is to run so the wet stuff stays on the outside after that everything else is gravy.