Learning the hard way!!! =(

[JC]

Being a new boat owner is a learning process...

Got our boat here in December and got to pull it out of the water yesterday for antifouling....

To my horror all zincs were gone and the props look like S%$#@.....

The edges of the props look eaten away and inside the props there are "pits " that go into the prop!!!

$3,500 gone!!!

Now the question!!! How can I prevent this from ever happening again...

I have a brand new set of spare props we had bought at the beggining...

They are Nibral 4 blade Hy-torq props... so I will put these on and get a new set of spares... or can the old "eaten away" ones be fixed somehow to have as spares???

I am so depressed....


Please some help so that this doesnt happen again...

How much zinc??

JC

[Capt. DQ]

JC,

Go to the building tips section of this site, set up by Capt. Patrick. Click on it and go to the grounding & bonding tips. Then also put zinc's on your shafts and trim tabs, rudders. That should help your problem, but also if docked next to somebody that is not grounded properly could eat you up also.

R,
DQ

[Ric]

Doug is absolutely correct referring to somebody else as possibly causing the problem,,(It could be your boat) My boat was bonded and absolutley grounded "properly" because I did it ,,all of it . I had a problem with zincs and noticed they were prematurely being eaten away off of rudder and shafts , for two seasons I struggled with it, until a "boat" that was in Back of me left the marina and Like magic ,my problem went away .,.,.,"Stray Current" and ain't that right "Short Circuit"

[Capt. DQ]

You got that right Ric!, looking forward to seeing you guys again at the flophouse. Have a safe trip down, we are leaving P'cola Wed. evening driving down should get there some time early Thurs. morning. See ya then!

R,
Doug

[Dug]

JC.

You are lucky you caught it!

I would believe that the deteriorated metal on the props is due to cavitation if it is close to the hub. If so, you need to add cup to your blade. See your prop dealer, he will go with it. You may need anywhere between 1-4 degrees of cup, depending on what the pitch of your props are. The B31, for all that is great about it, is not an efficient hull by standards, in otherwords it takes a bunch of torque to push her. That leads to cavitation if the prop is not set up right. Cup is the solution.

Also, to go from December to October is a long time to go without checking zincs! I check mine at least every 2 months.

That is almost a year, and I am not surprised at all that they are gone!

Dug

[John Jackson]

Do you have zincs on your trim tabs? I have found that they get eaten away at the same rate as everything underneath, but they are easy to see and monitor from the dock. If the zincs on the tabs are shot, you probably have to change them all. Just make sure you put a scrub brush to the tabs to keep them clean and you should have no problem seeing what is going on.