Thanks guys. I did some testing tonight. My ground tests out perfect. The size of cable depends on the length of run and at 2 gauge I'm at least a double more than what the requirement is. And all of the cables are new. I reconnected the resistor after getting the warning from SSA.

I ran it for a while in the driveway tonight and after letting it run for almost 15 minutes, the starter was still very cool. I really think the wiring setup which had the alternator feeding back through the post on the starter was the issue. I turned it off several times and restarted and about created a fire with the wire from the solenoid to the starter. It's one I had simply moved into that location from the old configuration and it was definitely too small of a gauge. I replaced it with some leftover 2 gauge wiring and tried it again. Success - at least on land. It definitely turned over much faster, and I seemed to have conquered the hot starter issue. Only a true lake test will tell me for sure, but that'll come this weekend.