I last hauled Aeolus in spring 2011, and at that time I cleaned off the prop really well and got her down to shiny bronze. I then tried something I had heard about and applied a generous amount of lanolin on her and hoped for the best. In prior years I have developed hard growth on the prop within months of putting her back in the water, and even a slow poke like me hates the inefficiency of turbulent flow on his prop caused by barnacles and algae.
Well, I dove on Aeolus this weekend to inspect the prop, expecting to find a lot of growth since it has been over a year, and what to my wondering eyes did appear but a really clean prop and only one place with a barnacle! I spun the prop around and around and couldn't believe it. I took my scraper and scraped a place and it was clear there was still lanolin on the prop because of the way it changed color and was waxy when I scraped it.
I've read about people buying and using fancy prop paints and hoping for good results, and I don't know if lanolin will work on the east coast or in the tropics, but let me tell you for certain that anywhere here on the west coast I have seen that it works wonders, and since I haul every two years to bottom paint anyway, I think I have found my permanent solution to prop fouling!
Yippee and cheap, cheap, cheap!
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