Changing the propellor

We are working with a company to produce an electric drive for King Malu, but in the mean time we have a 20 HP Honda outboard on the back. Not exactly pretty, but gets us into and out of the marina!

We bought the outboard from Mailspeed Marine in the UK. They are a great company to deal with.



They don't advertise the 20HP on their website, but give them a call and they can supply it... and arrange delivery wherever you are in the world.

Anyway... this morning was very still... the water like a mirror. So this is just the day to turn King Malu around and change the propellor. The reason to change the propellor is that a couple of weeks ago we noticed that at times the motor suddenly races but with no apparent change in speed through the water. We believe this is caused by a breakdown in the bonding between the rubber shock mount in the propellor and the propellor shaft.

We disconnected the remote belden cables to control the outboard and then lifted it up so that Tim, on the jetty, could get at the propellor. I remain on King Malu as the gopher... to go and get any tools he might need.

20 minutes later and the new propellor is in place! I hadn't expected it to be so quick. I thought we might fight getting the old propellor off, but it was a very easy piece of maintenance.

We also took the opportunity to remove any growth on the bottom of the outboard. Keeping it in the water is not the best for it, but we have no choice.

The old propellor shows the state of the growth on it.

So having changed the propellor we took King Malu out for a tial motor in the bay. You will notice if you look carefully two differences between the old and the new, and I don't mean the state of the growth on it. The shape and pitch of the blades is different. The new propellor has a much shallower pitch. This should give us greater pushing power and more control at low speed. It was slightly disconcerting to have higher revs than we were used to with the old propellor, but the control was certainly better. It was impossible to tell how much change in power we had since the sea was so flat.