Interesting….if it’s electrical; what would be the most common/most likely point of failure with the symptoms described?

The spark plug coils and spark plug wires (HT leads)?

I had O'Reilly auto order me a case of plugs. They were only 2.50 or 3 bucks each. I just kept them with me. I changed them on the water more than once too.
I thought it was sea foam fouling my plugs, but those plugs with no hook seem to burn up on their own.

ECM could be the issue as well. Before you buy one see if you can swap one with someone with same motor to see if that’s the issue.

You had something else entirely going on if you were changing plugs every month.

I just put plugs in it. The plugs that came out looked a little worn, but none of them were fouled. We'll see what happens this afternoon.

Yeah it's boatt break out another two thousand...

When it's won't start, pull the cowling. Spray some brake clean in the air intake and see if it fires or attempts to fire. If it does, then you have a fuel issue. If it doesn't, then you got an ignition problem.

Think this is a 2 cycle motor? If so don't run too much off of brake clean as you need oil, but just to fire it quick shouldn't be an issue.

Also, wouldn't hesitate changing plugs anyway. 2 cycle plugs need to be changed out more often.

Take to a good Mercury mechanic , you don't want to get caught in a spring storm . Fish and Ski in Sanger or good on Mercury's i have heard.

I bet you have a stator getting hot and breaking down and it starts running on just a couple of cylinders. That is what Merc's do.

Marc, shine a flashlight underneath your flywheel. You should see wire wrapped packs coated in clear protective coating. You can't see all of them but alot of the time it's the rear one's that pop. the coating will be black or melted looking or different than the one next to it. You keep running that with a merc and you will get the packs and voltage regulator also if you not careful. I had 3 of them Nickel and dime you to death. There is also A timing trigger under the flywheel that it could be. I'm not sure what year they got away from all that. Should have been when they went to dfi.

Likely a clogged fuel filter

Hey Marc, did you ever resolve your problem? Would be interested to find out how this ended up.

We need closure! Don’t pull a Rrrandy!

Interesting because my voltage regulator melted when my XRI was doing this. I sold it right after I replaced the voltage regulators.(I think there were 2 of them). New spark plugs always fixed it though, so I am guessing the issue was related to getting spark.

New plugs, 36 gallons of super unleaded and a can of Seafoam didn't fix it. Doing the same thing. I'm going to try and do what GarySHO is suggesting this weekend.