The Four Winns manuals I am familiar with recommend opening the engine compartment and doing the "sniff test", then running the blower for at least 4 minutes prior to engine start to ventilate and remove any hazardous fumes from the engine compartment. The manuals also recommend using the blower while operating at "no wake" speeds. This is to provide the ventilation at slow speeds that the boat gets by ram air ventilation at cruising speeds. As others have indicated, this is another owners manual recommendation that isn't always followed.......
I have also used the blower to help minimize the potential for vapor lock. For those raised eyebrows, yes, I have had vapor lock on carbureted and fuel injected boats on 90+ degree days in Minnesota. This vapor lock is most likely to occur after retrieving a water skier, tube rider, etc on one of those hot days. The boat has been at operating temp for a while, then shut down for at least 5 to maybe 30 minutes, and the engine compartment is "heat soaked" which has warmed up the carburetor or fuel injection system fuel passages or fuel lines enough to vaporize some fuel in these lines or passages. The engine cranks over but either won't start, won't keep running, or won't accelerate without missing or dying. Time and blower use will correct this, but it may take 15-30 minutes. The boats were '95 and '99 190 Horizons. The one carbureted boat was near new with less than 50 hours on it. The '95 EFI boat would do it maybe once or twice a year under the above conditions since new and throughout the 2 thousand hours we had it. We had a lot of fun with that boat over a lot of years!
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