Centaur prop ensnagulation

Bollix, my Pentland has taken the ground twice a day for the 25 years I have had it (inc maybe 5 years total shore sat on her keels) the rudder is about 2-3" off the ground on a hard standing. We bounced for 30 mins on hard sand drying out at Port Dinllaen last week without damage to rudder or keels.



Stuff never gets "funnelled between the keels" in my experience. Even when crew have chucked a pick up buoy away on the opposite side of the hull to a mooring buoy & the tide has carried me over the strop, all I needed to do was put engine in neutral for the prop to be safe. Mind you the bloody ropes still jam in the horizontal gap between the skeg & the balanced section of the rudder & that can be a pain to release.

Dylan, don't stress, old Laurent Giles Westerlies are no more prone to prop wrap than any other design & a lot less than some.

Searush,

either you have been lucky or I and my Dad have been unlucky; you may note I was speaking from personal experience.

I am still a supporter of LG designed Westerlies, they may not have all the stripes to be trendy but they actually do their job very well; I think I'll always stick with slightly more performance oriented boats though, as I don't have a family in tow.

Things getting funnelled between the keels straight to the prop & rudder is quite an obvious effect if one thinks about it, which applies to any twin keel, single engine & rudder cruising boat.
 
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Worst boats by far in numbers seem to be fishing cats (as the prop is close to the edge of the hull so sucks water down) Yachts with their small props and low torque aren't sucking much water through when compared to a heavy fishing boat so I don't think this is the worst arrangement, probably more chance than a fin or long keel though. Often people call us after an incident and I think that gives us a fair stab at which boats have more problems. yachts are quite low on the list.

Putting wires on would be likely to catch weed and feed it to the rudder I would think. Supplying unensnagulation (seems less crude than rope cutter) systems since 2004.
 
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