As I see it, you should be shopping for a twin cylinder two stroke. The four strokes are heavy and often only a single cylinder in the small hp sizes and they vibrate more than a twin. Any small outboard gets terrific gas mileage so mixing gas and 50 to 1 oil for an older one isn't much of a hassle. My buddy who fixes outboards said to stay away from the low profile 9.5 Evinrude Litewin. Our Canada camp owner ran the 9.9's with good luck if he could keep guys from augering them through the sand and plugging up the water pump. He later went to the 15's that erich mentioned which were better, faster and didn't seem to use any more gas. I switched to a 7.5 and later a 9.8 Merc because I wanted to get away from sheer pins on the smaller OMC engines. Our 40 year old Merc 9.8 is on the pontoon boat and starts first or second pull and has been a great motor. The wife also had a newer 9.8 Merc that shifted with the twist grip, but I liked my older shift on the side 9.8 more so we sold her's. A motor in the ten hp range should plane a 14 footer while a smaller one probably won't.
