If I am successful at getting a bolt on piece of billet to raise the intakes high as carbs,it will be a great freeride setup,it does use alot of fuel,but so do dual 48s and those still dont hit as hard as the mrd. sj skis in the surf if they get upside down,they are water fouled and wont restart,mostly cause aftermarket hoods and crapy breathers and scuppers,along with baffelless water boxes allowing water to flow back into the motor. so even raising the intakes wont help with that on mrd,the point is to keep small bits of water from splashing into the intakes while ridding.the higher the better.small performance loss going away from the straight in air intake,but worth it for surf ridding.
Getting water in your motor from being flipped over in surf is not going to cause damage,we have sunk so many skis its not funny,never poped a motor,just get them running turning them upside down on the beach and back in the water 10 min later is the key to that.we ride 5 min on any sunk ski before its trailered