I have done quite a bit of ethanol reseach, and many of you have made very good points. Ethanol has its time and place.
The concern with ethanol and boat motors (really its mainly a 2 stroke concern) is that it burns leaner then gasoline. An engine running too lean gets HOT, and 2 strokes have a tendency to melt down when they get too hot.
ALSO, ethanol IS harder on seals, gaskets, ect. Ideally, if everything was stainless, you would have no problems. Hard, and costly, to do though.
It would be hard to believe with this post that I am an Ethanol SUPPORTER, but I am. If you have fuel systems and engines that are built to run on ethanol, even as high as E85, you have the benifit of it burning cleaner. And I think most of us would agree that a cleaner environment would benifit us all. Also, for you motorheads out there, you can get trememdous power out of ethanol, you can run a 4 stroke engine up in the lines of 15:1 compression on pump E85. And as you well know compression = power !!