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One other comment/question about your new belt: Does it have the ribs in it, or is it a solid belt? A ribbed belt is critically important for heat transfer area. A solid belt will overheat, and that might be why you see it start to slip after a short warmup time.

A few comments:

On your vintage of MkII boat, you have an M35B (also called M35BC, since Westerbeke did some special electrical things for Catalina). M35 and M35A are different models from M35B, and those differences can be significant.

I think 180F is too high, especially at only 1800 RPM. I would not assume that the gauge is wrong, since temperature gauges are usually pretty good. I'm not sure how you could check this. Maybe there is a place near the thermostat where you could point an IR gun.

Before doing too much, I'd pull the thermostat and see what temperature is stamped on it. I remember reading some "folklore" that some people prefer slightly higher temp than Westerbeke's spec of 160-165F, so maybe the PO installed a hotter thermostat.

Aside from that, there are several other possible causes for high temperature. If your belt is slipping on the freshwater pump pulley, that could cause the freshwater pump to be circulating too little coolant. It's possible that your water pump bearings are going bad, which could cause friction and slippage (and leaking of coolant). This might also be why your coolant reservoir is low. I learned that one that hard way (and replaced my coolant pump) a few years ago.

Are you tensioning the belt properly? I generally need to tighten my belt 2-3 times per season. There are several ways to tension it (I have a unique way, but it's too much detail to explain now; see this thread: https://c34.org/bbs/index.php/topic,11731.0.html). I use a Krikit tension gauge and tighten to 50-70 lb on that gauge. As the V-belt gets old it tends to wear on the sides and get narrower, thus sinking into the pulleys further, which is why you need to keep pushing the alternator out. I typically end up moving the alternator out on the bracket 1/4"-1/2" per year. I do keep my belt a little tighter than some, because I found that any "wobble" at all between the engine pulley and the alternator causes subtle engine vibrations that transmit all the way to the shaft and cause wear in my stuffing box. But that's just my boat, and the higher tension comes at the potential cost of wearing out my water pump bearings (expensive) and belts (cheap) more frequently. I just bought a replacement belt from NAPA. If you have the original alternator (not an upgrade) the part to get is NAPA #15395 (note correction), and it only cost $5.49. I haven't tested it yet, since it's a spare for the genuine Westerbeke one that I just installed. The NAPA guy told me it's made for them by Gates.

What raw water pump do you have? Many here swear by the Oberdorfer N202M pump, and they work perfectly on older boats with smaller engines. However, Depco Pumps told me that it is only rated for up to 30 HP, and the M35B puts out 35 hp. Nevertheless, many people use them successfully on MkII boats with M35B, but there are isolated cases where MkII owners have not been successful (steam in the exhaust) and those owners went back to the Sherwood G908, which has a wider impeller providing higher throughput (at the cost of greater resistance on the crankshaft coupler, which some will tell you horror stories about). However, I'm sticking with Sherwood for now.

Key takeaway: Every decision you make has tradeoffs. Changing a part spec, belt tension, thermostat, or most anything else may solve one problem but create another one.

I do the Damprid thing during off-season haulout (we have winter here), with a small solar panel outside the canvas cover powering a fan to circulate air past the refillable canisters. That works great in winter here (I usually go all winter without having to refill), but definitely not enough for where you are.

During the season I have a Marinco solar vent in our salon hatch that blows air out, and fresh air comes in through the cracks in the companionway hatches. Works great here (never had any mold), but probably still not enough for you in Florida. However, there are LOTS of reliability problems with Marinco's latest solar vents requiring me to make annual warranty claims.

On our prior boat (C250) I had a small Peltier dehumidifier that sat in the sink, just like you suggest. It consumed 72 watts and ran constantly, but it's very inefficient - it didn't remove much water for the amount of electricity it consumed (maybe a pint a week at most). It was good enough for my little 25 foot boat in Pennsylvania, but probably not enough capacity for you in Florida, or for a larger boat anywhere. The Peltier types are sold under various brand names, the most popular being Eva-Dry. I'm telling you this so you can avoid them, since I doubt it would have the capacity you need.

For your needs, you probably need a full-blown dehumidifier (which runs with coils and Freon, like a refrigerator), which will be larger/heavier and perhaps a little cumbersome to put on your galley counter. You'd get these at Home Depot, Best Buy, or other appliance store. They usually have built-in collection pans that hold a gallon or tow (can go about a week), with a punch-out that you can attach a hose to that could go into your bilge if you need more capacity. That is what I would recommend for summer. Probably would fit under your salon table with hose going to the bilge.

Finally, if you have or want to consider a full-blown 120v marine reverse-cycle air conditioner in your boat (might be nice for Florida), they usually have a "dehumidifier mode" which will do the job much more economically than running the AC full blast. You'd run AC while you're on the boat in the slip, but run dehumidifier mode when you're away from the boat. Might be worth considering in Florida. This would require you to leave a through-hull open for the intake water. Water usually exits above the waterline. My boat has one of these, and it makes a huge difference when we spend time in the slip. I don't need to run dehumidifier when we're away because the solar fan is enough for us up here.

I know this is an old thread, but I'll mention this for future people who may see it: One very economical option for improving the shape of an older, bagged out mainsail is to have a sail loft cut the bolt rope. The bolt rope shrinks over time, while the cloth stretches. These two opposite effects lead to severe bagginess. You can't un-stretch the cloth, but you can reduce the bagginess by cutting the bolt rope and allowing it to relax.

I've had this done on two different sails. For my prior boat, the loft removed and replaced the bolt rope along the luff (somewhat costly). They might have done the same thing on the foot, I don't remember. For my current C34, a different loft (Chuck O'Malley in Annapolis) just cut the bolt rope near the bottom without replacing it, and patched the cloth. When we they tensioned the luff, the bolt rope separated by over a foot, which really took the bag out of the sail. It's still the factory original mainsail, and with this adjustment it performs adequately for my needs.

I'll play devil's advocate for a minute and suggest an alternative explanation.

Our boat can have pretty bad weather helm in 15-20 kt of wind if we don't reef the mainsail. In those conditions with full main, I have to turn the rudder so far that we lose speed. When we reef, our speed goes up because of less rudder drag, but even then we have a little weather helm. Interestingly, sailing on our 135 genny alone give almost perfect helm balance in a blow, so if we're going out in 15-20 kt we will sometimes leave the mainsail down and just sail on the genny.

Given those performance characteristics, I could easily envision sailing in 15-20 kt on mainsail alone, without the opposing lee helm offered by the genny, could require a lot of rudder drag to avoid rounding up, which may be slow your speed and also cause you to lose a lot of hydrodynamic lift under the waterline.

This worked for all my bolts.

The loaner wrench that AutoZone has is about twice as long. No need for an extension pipe.

Not sure how the rest of you do it, but I get down on the floor and put my left foot against the head of the wrench, then pull the wrench handle with my right hand. The foot on the head helps prevent excessive side loads on the socket/extension. With a 2' long wrench it only takes about 54 lb. of pull on the handle to get to 107 ft-lb.

My socket: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B009ALXYOE

I don't know how long my extension is. I bought it from Harbor Freight.

I borrow a 250 ft-lb torque wrench from AutoZone every spring. No reason to buy one.

I always spray the nuts with PB Blaster before tightening.

When lifting the socket+extension out of the bilge, ALWAYS hold it with your hand. If  it falls off the torque wrench, you'll have a dent in your flooring.

I just re-installed my stuffing box onto the shaft hose, and re-packed the stuffing box with two rings of 1/4"x1/4" DuraMax Ultra-X. I am very pleased with it, but I was unable to get it into the nut when it was on the shaft. There wasn't quite enough clearance between the shaft and the threads in the nut, and I didn't want to risk damaging it by forcing it in. Instead, I removed the nut from the shaft (easy, since I already had the coupler off), pre-packed it (using the tapered end of my old, bent, bronze shaft as a mandrel to push the stuffing out into the threads), then popped the pre-packed nut onto the end of the shaft.

If I ever had to re-pack the stuffing box with the nut on the shaft (especially if the boat was in the water), I would think twice before doing it with 1/4"x1/4" packing. The clearance between the threads and the shaft is very tight, and risks twisting or fraying the packing when inserting it (even if using MaineSail's PVC insertion tool). If I were doing it in the water, I would probably go with 3 rings of 3/16" stuffing, which would insert into the nut more easily. The Ultra-X is deformable, so after tightening the rings would compress axially and expand radially into the threads. But the 1/4" material works fine as long as you have a tapered mandrel to expand the ring into the threads.

It's OK to do a preliminary alignment in on the hard, but should always finish the job in the water.

..The aft starboard engine mount was adjusted to it's maximum height if that is any indication as to the state of the mounts.

That does not necessarily mean the mount is worn out. But even with brand new mounts, you should never raise the nut more than 3/8" high on the stud, otherwise the mounts will flex horizontally too much. If the motor needs to be higher than 3/8" on the studs, you should put shims under the mounts until you get it under 3/8".

I'm not an expert, but I've been advised not to mix different metals for anodes. I believe it's because you may get extremely fast erosion from the more active anodes, and your zinc will be rendered inactive leading to potential damage to whatever is closest to the zinc. If anyone can find a pencil anode for the HX in aluminum, let me know and I'll consider changing everything from zinc to aluminum. I think that magnesium is only meant for nearly pure freshwater.

Quick follow-up: I refinished my hatchboards last week. You can see some gray in the pictures above. When I bought the boat they were old and gray, so about 4 or 5 years ago I did a major job to restore them. This time around I had let them go about a year too long, so it took some prep, but not nearly as much as before. I didn't strip everything off, just enough stripping and sanding in the weathered sections to allow penetration of some bleach solutions and then some oxalic acid brightener, followed by more sanding and several coats Spar PU varnish:

Here's some promised follow-up: I went to the boat today to retrieve the hatchboards for re-refinishing (you can see why in the picture). Here's the "magazine rack" style storage bracket. I thought it was factory installed - do any other MkII owners have it? When I bought the boat in 2016 the elastic bungee was cracked and ready to fail, so I immediately replaced that, but otherwise it's exactly like when I purchased the boat. (Yes, I normally have companionway stairs there, but I was working on the engine at the time.)

So I suppose these are all signs of an over sized Prop...

It's over-pitched, not over-sized. A prop shop can adjust the pitch of your current prop, although going from 12" pitch to 9" pitch may be more than they are able to do. You might want to inquire about this before launching this spring.

Note for others: Never purchase a prop with larger diameter than the factory spec. Its clearance with the hull is carefully engineered, and an oversized prop may cause vibration, cavitation, or worse.

Regarding strobe tachometer, I stumbled across this yesterday $16. I already have one, but it cost a lot more than this:

https://www.amazon.com/Non-Contact-Tachometer-Precision-Backlight-Functions/dp/B07T25BCB1

If you do test, you should do it on the main motor pully. If for some reason you decide to do it on your prop shaft or coupler, be sure to account for the gear reduction ratio to calculate the engine RPMs.

I think this can be valuable information, for what it is worth my prop on the M35 is a Michigan Sailer 8/89, 15RH12.

Is that 3-blade or 2-blade?

If that is a 3-blade prop, then IMO you are probably WAY over-propped. Most 3-blades for this boat are 15x9 (mine is, and my M35B has 17% higher horsepower than your M35). Some people get away with 15x10 on the M35B. I've never heard of a 3-blade 15x12 on a boat/motor this size. You're probably lugging your motor, generating a bunch of soot that could plug your exhaust elbow, and pushing the limits of your HX capacity. Remember, if your motor runs slower, your raw water impeller is pumping less water, which may be why you are seeing steam.

Many people fool themselves into thinking that lower RPM always equates to better fuel economy. It doesn't work that way. Would you drive your car in 5th gear all the time?

I second the suggestion to hire a good mechanic. You've got multiple warning signs in several areas, and they're probably interconnected.

FYI, your M35 is spec'ed for a max speed of 3200 RPM. You are so far below that that you really need to do something about it. https://www.westerbeke.com/universalengines.htm