This study was carried out to improve the design of an intercooler for a small marine diesel engine. Diesel engines for small marine ships have mainly been developed by changing the structure of the vehicle engine. Sea water was most commonly used in the intercooler of small marine diesel engines to cool the hot air compressed by the turbocharger. In this study, the intercooler is modeled and simulated using STAR-CCM+ in order to find optimal data for the design of an intercooler. In the results, the temperature differences between the data from a numerical analysis and experimental data were $0.38^{circ}C$ in the hot air outlet and $3.63^{circ}C$ in the cooling water outlet. Therefore, it was confirmed that both analysis and experimental results need to be considered when designing an intercooler. A closer degree of similarity in the two datasets can improve the confidence in the design of these intercoolers.