Tips for Maintaining Your Outboard Propeller

Do you think that you work hard? Try being a propeller for a day, swirling in circles for hours on end in nasty, weed-infested water, plowing blindly through mud and muck, grinding away over gravel, then whacking the occasional rock or deadhead – now that’s hard work.

To add insult to injury, if the prop gets damaged, the boat’s performance suffers, and the captain fires off a volley of expletives at the propeller. Your boat’s prop leads a tough life.

And perhaps most important, always have a spare prop onboard. Think of it like a spare tire for your car. Having a spare prop onboard means if your propeller gets damaged you still have a way to get your boat – and you – home. It also means you can keep using your boat while your main prop is being repaired.

Boating in brackish, polluted, or saltwater can cause polished stainless propellers to lose their luster over time. Try using a bathroom cleaner (the kind for soap scum) to scrub residue off of the prop; believe it or not, it usually does a pretty good job.

Completely remove your propeller a couple of times each season to remove anything that may have gotten tangled around it, namely fishing line.

Speaking of stainless wheels, they’re not stain-proof – they’re stain-less. If you boat in salty, polluted or icky contaminated water, rinse the propeller with fresh water after you’re done for the day, to stave off the development of red iron oxide and prevent the accumulation of an unidentifiable non-aesthetic film from forming on the prop.