Working fine
I thought I would drop you a quick email to let you know that I pulled my sailboat, Exeter, out of the water last Friday and had a chance to inspect the propeller after a summer’s worth of sailing in Chicago. Attached are several photos. When the boat first was on the hard, the bottom was covered in a thin slime with no major growth. This is usual for boats in Lake Michigan. After a pressure wash, the propeller looked as shown in photo 1. After a quick, mild acid wash, the propeller looked as shown in photo 2. Looks like brand new! The only interesting thing to report was that my magnesium anode on the propeller shaft was quite severely consumed. I still may be having a stray current issue on the dock. It did its job and there didn’t seem to be any corrosion issues with the propeller.
So, overall, I am very pleased with my Orion propeller. I changed the pitch to be right on 20 degrees and will see how this works out next year. The only thing I would recommend to EWOL would be to also offer the spinner anodes on the propeller to be made out of magnesium. This would double protect the propeller for sailing in fresh water. (note: we have now magnesium anodes available in our shop online)
2020-10-18 JN – USA
It is working fine and the performance seems better than the three bladed M… that I replaced. It is smoother when motoring and seems to be a little bit faster when just motoring at idle speed. I still don’t have the pitch set perfectly. At launch, I went with a 18 degree blade setting which is a little bit low. The engine (Yanmar 2GM20F), easily can rev up to 3600 and the boat speed is a little bit over 6 knots. Shortly, I will be setting it to 19 degrees and see how this works.
2020-08-21 JN – USA
