Sharrow props

[FSH 210 Sport]

Not jet boat related.. at least yet. If I had an outboard I would definitely have these props on my boat. Scroll down to the boat test vid.

https://www.sharrowmarine.com/sharrow-propeller

 

[mrmeaniemeateaterman]

Obviously you haven't seen the price tag then. $4900! These props are about as controversial on boating forums as masks on babies at a school board meeting. Buy me one I'll put on my Robalo and give a full report back here.
Might be 18% more efficient but assuming my boat gets 3mpg, a 18% increase is 3.54mpg. At $3.80/gallon I would break even after I have traveled 25500 miles on my new propeller and spent over $27000 dollars on fuel.

 

[FSH 210 Sport]

Obviously you haven't seen the price tag then. $4900! These props are about as controversial on boating forums as masks on babies at a school board meeting. Buy me one I'll put on my Robalo and give a full report back here.
Might be 18% more efficient but assuming my boat gets 3mpg, a 18% increase is 3.54mpg. At $3.80/gallon I would break even after I have traveled 25500 miles on my new propeller and spent over $27000 dollars on fuel.

Controversy and new technological advancements are not strange bedfellows… I have personally witnessed the entrenched dogma of old school systems facing the new idea’s. Heck, look at how “the hull truth” was throwing the FSH series of boats under the bus with a bunch of totally ignorant statements… so nothing new there with the Internet forums.

Yes, I saw the price, the price doesn’t bother me, especially when looking at the whole envelope of the performance gains, and not just top speed. Per the boat test article, the plaining speed gain in efficiency was not 18%, it was 179%. I’m not looking to make my money back on an investment, I’m looking at extending the range and performance envelope just by installing a prop. If I was looking for a financial return on an investment I sure wouldn’t have bought a boat!




So just venturing a guess here… your Robalo getting 3mpg could in theory go to 5.3mpg for an increase of 78% at best economic cruise. Again, for me it’s about the ability to extend the range of a given full gas tank. For a 100 gallon tank, in theory, the range would go from 300 miles to 530 miles. Is that worth $5K to me? Absolutely.

 

[mrmeaniemeateaterman]

Look at the data you presented, not the headline they want you to see. That data you presented now shows me the 18% I use is WAY too high, it really is about 2% at most when I'm optimally cruising at 4500rpm. So now with my boat getting 3mpg, a 2% increase is 3.06mpg. At $3.80/gallon I would break even after I have traveled 200,000 miles on my new propeller and spent over $248,000 dollars on fuel. My range goes from 300 miles to 306 miles per tank.

As a scientist myself I can manipulate any multitude of variables to give you the result you want. But thankfully most ethical scientist don't do this and why all published science (in quality journals) is peer reviewed. This is why I don't trust any data coming from a manufacturer who is trying to sell a product or any studies from an advertiser (Boattest) being paid by that manufacturer to do an "independent" test. None of that "data" above is independently reviewed open data that is peer reviewed by other scientists. It is cherry picked data points for hype and sales.

As the operator of an outboard, I can manipulate my engine trim and my trim tabs to make my mpg jump from 1mpg to almost 4mpg, especially when I am at that just about to plane off RPM all with the very same prop generating a 400% difference. What I see in that data presented is at 3000-3500 rpm the 2 standard props haven't yet planed the boat giving those misleading data claims. However when you look at the 4000-4500 rpm which is optimal cruise for the standard props and where I spend most of my time at cruise, the difference is 0-2% better. Again I can manipulate my engine trim and trim tabs to make way more of a difference than that while cruising. Learning the trim nuances coming from a jet boat took me a lot of trial and error. Can't always look at the mpg either as sometimes the smoother cruiser is worth burning more fuel especially in 2ft rough chop.

I'm not saying Sharrow is a bad design and is maybe slightly better. It is definitely a work of art and a case study for complicated machining. But when my prop gets dinged up and needs replaced I can buy a $350 one from Yamaha or a $4900 one from Sharrow. I know who's getting my money.

 

[2kwik4u]

I really thought you misspelled shallow........I had a poor taste stereotype in my head as well.

I'll see myself out.

 

[FSH 210 Sport]

Look at the data you presented, not the headline they want you to see. That data you presented now shows me the 18% I use is WAY too high, it really is about 2% at most when I'm optimally cruising at 4500rpm. So now with my boat getting 3mpg, a 2% increase is 3.06mpg. At $3.80/gallon I would break even after I have traveled 200,000 miles on my new propeller and spent over $248,000 dollars on fuel. My range goes from 300 miles to 306 miles per tank.

As a scientist myself I can manipulate any multitude of variables to give you the result you want. But thankfully most ethical scientist don't do this and why all published science (in quality journals) is peer reviewed. This is why I don't trust any data coming from a manufacturer who is trying to sell a product or any studies from an advertiser (Boattest) being paid by that manufacturer to do an "independent" test. None of that "data" above is independently reviewed open data that is peer reviewed by other scientists. It is cherry picked data points for hype and sales.

As the operator of an outboard, I can manipulate my engine trim and my trim tabs to make my mpg jump from 1mpg to almost 4mpg, especially when I am at that just about to plane off RPM all with the very same prop generating a 400% difference. What I see in that data presented is at 3000-3500 rpm the 2 standard props haven't yet planed the boat giving those misleading data claims. However when you look at the 4000-4500 rpm which is optimal cruise for the standard props and where I spend most of my time at cruise, the difference is 0-2% better. Again I can manipulate my engine trim and trim tabs to make way more of a difference than that while cruising. Learning the trim nuances coming from a jet boat took me a lot of trial and error. Can't always look at the mpg either as sometimes the smoother cruiser is worth burning more fuel especially in 2ft rough chop.

I'm not saying Sharrow is a bad design and is maybe slightly better. It is definitely a work of art and a case study for complicated machining. But when my prop gets dinged up and needs replaced I can buy a $350 one from Yamaha or a $4900 one from Sharrow. I know who's getting my money.

I appreciate your words and view points on this subject. After all you are the one with the outboard and I am not.

I’m curious… what model Robalo ( bitchen boats by the way) do you have and what engine do you have?

 

[mrmeaniemeateaterman]

Always happy to provide boat pics @FSH 210 Sport Us center console guys who like to fish have to watch each others backs with these bowriding wakesurfers lurking about.
I have a 2020 246 Cayman with a 300hp Yamaha with Digital controls. It's a fishing boat that has enough comfy cushions that I take in/out & a head to keep the wife happy. I had the tow bar custom made locally, which improved the tubing/wakeboarding dramatically. About 60 hours on the gas motor probably 4000+ hours on the Minn Kota Terrova. That iPilot is best thing since sliced bread especially for inshore fishing. Glad I bought it all pre-covid as an identical boat recently sold at my local dealer for $25K more than what I paid in Jan 2020.

 

[Ronnie]

$4,900 for a prop is not totally unexpected. I recall complaining about paying $400 for a repitched impeller on a separate thread on which @swatski informed me that he paid around $1,500 for a new prop for his fishing boat. @zipper posted a price list for props for sail boats and his was $5k. A few years ago I saw a story on Tv about the Geico f1 boat, it was two props that cost $15k each. Still $4,900 for a prop is a lot of money, too much for a guy like me and I think I make good money. The only way I would have one is if it came with the boat.

I will post a pic from a recent boating magazine which contains an ad for a lithium battery. The battery is supposed to provide twice the life of a conventional model but costs $900. I thought and think $400 is too much for a gel cell, especially when o can buy a conventional battery at Walmart for just over $100 or an AGM from an auto parts store for around $200.

 

[FSH 210 Sport]

Always happy to provide boat pics @FSH 210 Sport Us center console guys who like to fish have to watch each others backs with these bowriding wakesurfers lurking about.
I have a 2020 246 Cayman with a 300hp Yamaha with Digital controls. It's a fishing boat that has enough comfy cushions that I take in/out & a head to keep the wife happy. I had the tow bar custom made locally, which improved the tubing/wakeboarding dramatically. About 60 hours on the gas motor probably 4000+ hours on the Minn Kota Terrova. That iPilot is best thing since sliced bread especially for inshore fishing. Glad I bought it all pre-covid as an identical boat recently sold at my local dealer for $25K more than what I paid in Jan 2020.View attachment 166640View attachment 166641View attachment 166642

Dang dude that’s a sexy sled!

Love all of the center console boats! I watched a few of the tests over again on the Robalos… very nice boats and a great value, with great build quality.

Thats a sure footed young man standing on the cap rail with socks on!

4000hrs on the troller is a lot! I’ve got 170 hours on the engines of my 2020 FSH that I took delivery of in august of 2020. I’ve been out 47 times (was shooting for 50) this year so far, and combined with last year I’ve got close to 1000 hours on the deck, so maybe 830 hours on the troller.

What batteries are you using for your troller? I’m curious as I’m thinking about going to lithium to get more hours out of a charge.

I’m sure that my rig would be at least another $25K if I were to buy it now, that’s if I could get it with the aftermarket parts. I had locked in the price with a deposit in April of 2020… I had to wait till May to put the deal in motion, but the RipTide was not available for a couple months. I feel grateful that I pulled the trigger on my boat when I did… had a “there’s no uhauls following the hearse to the graveyard moments”.

The Sharrow prop really got my attention as I’m testing impellers for high altitude operations, which led to a deep rabbit hole of research. I’m making good progress and will make a post when I’m finished testing, looking for the beat compromise so I don’t have to swap impellers when I travel.

 

[zipper]

$4,900 for a prop is not totally unexpected. I recall complaining about paying $400 for a repitched impeller on a separate thread on which @swatski informed me that he paid around $1,500 for a new prop for his fishing boat. @zipper posted a price list for props for sail boats and his was $5k. A few years ago I saw a story on Tv about the Geico f1 boat, it was two props that cost $15k each. Still $4,900 for a prop is a lot of money, too much for a guy like me and I think I make good money. The only way I would have one is if it came with the boat.

I will post a pic from a recent boating magazine which contains an ad for a lithium battery. The battery is supposed to provide twice the life of a conventional model but costs $900. I thought and think $400 is too much for a gel cell, especially when o can buy a conventional battery at Walmart for just over $100 or an AGM from an auto parts store for around $200.

The Max Prop Easy for the sailboat is a bronze feathering propellor with pitch adjustment and rotation change capability. We paid $3100 for the prop. and the fee for haul out twice...twice, because they sent the wrong rotation, I did not visually check to see if it was the LH prop we ordered. Installed it, splashed the boat, throttled forward and the boat moved aft. Had to haul out and change the rotation of the prop. while in the slings. They sent us a RH prop. We did all that for a 1+kt. increase in speed due to less drag than a fixed prop.
Edit:

This is that prop. right after install and you can see it is clearly a right hand rotation. Never thought to confirm it was the LH prop we ordered.

 

[mrmeaniemeateaterman]

Thanks for the compliments @FSH 210 Sport My estimation of 4000 hours said 1/2 sarcastically as no real clue. Although there has been a lot of days where we fished 8 hours and maybe put 30mins on the gas motor, rest all trolling. Even when just chilling somewhere I often put use the trolling motor to keep boat ’anchored’. (Only reason anchor was out in the above pic is the boat is sitting in 1-2ft of water.)
As far as my batteries they are just 3 regular old lead acid, group 27 batteries. In that pic above, the storage fore of the green bag, there is a removable floor access and batteries fit in there. Very clean and out of the way. Had dealer install it all as well as 3 bank charger as part of purchase. Good design as no head space lost. Even with my boat and often windy rough conditions the batteries have yet to die. Lowest I have seen it read is 1/2 charged at the end of the day (although I have no idea how reliable that is). Unless you are running trolling motor for extended periods of time at a speed of 5 or higher, ie try to hold over a reef in the current or working against tidal currents along edges, I doubt you would need to go Lithium for a typical day of fishing. We joke that there is only 2 reasons to quit fishing. Trolling motor dies or we run out of snacks. The snacks always go first.

I fully understand the rabbit hole of research. My wealth of knowledge is vast for useless crap I have read on reviews and forums because I think I might need one too. I’m sure most on here can relate. Good luck with the impeller research.


@zipper all I can say is there would have been some choice “daddy only” words coming out of my mouth that day.

 

[FSH 210 Sport]

Thanks for the compliments @FSH 210 Sport My estimation of 4000 hours said 1/2 sarcastically as no real clue. Although there has been a lot of days where we fished 8 hours and maybe put 30mins on the gas motor, rest all trolling. Even when just chilling somewhere I often put use the trolling motor to keep boat ’anchored’. (Only reason anchor was out in the above pic is the boat is sitting in 1-2ft of water.)
As far as my batteries they are just 3 regular old lead acid, group 27 batteries. In that pic above, the storage fore of the green bag, there is a removable floor access and batteries fit in there. Very clean and out of the way. Had dealer install it all as well as 3 bank charger as part of purchase. Good design as no head space lost. Even with my boat and often windy rough conditions the batteries have yet to die. Lowest I have seen it read is 1/2 charged at the end of the day (although I have no idea how reliable that is). Unless you are running trolling motor for extended periods of time at a speed of 5 or higher, ie try to hold over a reef in the current or working against tidal currents along edges, I doubt you would need to go Lithium for a typical day of fishing. We joke that there is only 2 reasons to quit fishing. Trolling motor dies or we run out of snacks. The snacks always go first.

I fully understand the rabbit hole of research. My wealth of knowledge is vast for useless crap I have read on reviews and forums because I think I might need one too. I’m sure most on here can relate. Good luck with the impeller research.
View attachment 166664View attachment 166665

@zipper all I can say is there would have been some choice “daddy only” words coming out of my mouth that day.

I’ve run my troller bank down to totally nothing once, and down to almost nothing quite a few times. I start trolling in the morning and don’t stop until about 6 hours later to check the battery level on the remote… not sure how accurate that thing is though. So I’m getting roughly 10 miles out of it, 5.5 to 6 hours or perhaps longer depending on how much wind I’m pushing. Typically this summer the troller is running at level 6 most of the day, sometimes 7 or 7 & 1/2 to maintain that speed into the wind. But just yesterday I was at another lake, glassy water most all day and after 6 hours I had half a charge left.. My average day on the water in summer is 12 hours, so that‘s why I’m thinking the lithium may have to come into play. Spot locking takes way less power than the constant 1.8 mph that seems to be the magic number for catching the fish where I’m at.

That’s a clean install for your batteries…. There is even some more room in there! What size is the alternator on your outboard?

I’ve read all I can find on this site about the impellers, and even on a lake specific site, a guy on there has a boat just like mine and we were comparing notes. As I may have mentioned before, there is one brand I’m testing that is notably smoother and quieter, 3 DB less in fact, which is a perceived halving of the noise. And the vibration and noise is dramatically reduced in the forward seating of the boat. My friend made me go sit up front while he drove during some of the testing and the comparison was pretty stark between the different impellers. I’m pretty sure that noise reduction comes in the full breadth of NVH (noise, vibration, harshness) reduction, so I’m not just chasing rpm gain, I’m chasing the whole package.

 

[mrmeaniemeateaterman]

Those 3 batteries are completely seperate from the alternator. I have to run a cord out to plug those in to charge at the end of each day. Have 2 other batteries, 1 for starting, 1 for house stuff that get charged by alternator. I’ve never bothered charging those, just keep the switch to off when not using boat.

Yeah running your trolling motor that hard for that long sounds pretty extreme. Sounds like you might be one of the few that would actually get the moneys worth out of the pricey batteries.

Wish I could help you on the impellers but I’ve stayed out of that rabbit hole. Honestly reducing the noise would be benefit enough even if minimal performance gains.

 

[FSH 210 Sport]

Those 3 batteries are completely seperate from the alternator. I have to run a cord out to plug those in to charge at the end of each day. Have 2 other batteries, 1 for starting, 1 for house stuff that get charged by alternator. I’ve never bothered charging those, just keep the switch to off when not using boat.

Yeah running your trolling motor that hard for that long sounds pretty extreme. Sounds like you might be one of the few that would actually get the moneys worth out of the pricey batteries.

Wish I could help you on the impellers but I’ve stayed out of that rabbit hole. Honestly reducing the noise would be benefit enough even if minimal performance gains.

So just food for thought for you…. Minnkota and Trollbridge make an on board battery charger that will charge your trolling motor batteries while under way. It works off of a voltage sensing relay and is connected to your house battery. One the house battery voltage climbs to 13.2 V if I am not mistaken, the onboard charger will charge each one of your trolling motor batteries separately like the 120VAC on board charger you use when the boat is parked. You just have to be sure the trolling motor is off and isolated from the batteries, either via an open circuit breaker or just uplug the cord if yours is hooked up that way.

As far as battery life goes for the troller, I want to take some trips that will put me out of reach of 120VAC for days at a time, and having triple the KWh’s in that battery bank would be great to have.

Agreed on the NVH reduction…

 

[2kwik4u]

@mrmeaniemeateaterman what's the deal with all the center console boats having that weird hand knob thing on the steering wheel? I see it on your Robalo, and they're on the Yamaha FSH boats as well.

What use case makes those important/worthwhile on a center console and not on a bowrider?

 

[FSH 210 Sport]

@mrmeaniemeateaterman what's the deal with all the center console boats having that weird hand knob thing on the steering wheel? I see it on your Robalo, and they're on the Yamaha FSH boats as well.

What use case makes those important/worthwhile on a center console and not on a bowrider?

What I can think of on these center console boats is where your body is when you are maneuvering. Most of the time one would be standing when driving a CC boat, and the brodie knob makes it really easy to maneuver quickly. Whereas a bow rider type you are seated kind of like in a car. I can tell you that I use the steering knob 99% of the time when I’m driving.

 

[mrmeaniemeateaterman]

Also because it takes a LOT of turns/rotations of the wheel to go make an outboard motor turn from center to full lock. Maybe 3-4? ..never really counted. I know coming from an AR210, which was maybe 1 rotation to lock, took some getting used to. So having the knob you can spin the motor rapidly, one handed. Especially in a docking/spinning situation where going from full lock to full lock you are talking 6-8 rotations, then 3-4 more back to center. Would really suck without that knob.

Also use it trolling where you are often standing sideways, can turn one handed.

And most importantly...it looks cool.

 

[FSH 210 Sport]

Looks like a lot of people are taking advantage of the Sharrow propeller.

Apparently a lot of people think these $5000 a piece props are worth the squeeze. On the World Cat boat these props increased range by 86 miles, from 282 to to 368, a 30.5% increase. I personally would get the props just for the increase in range.

https://boattest.com/Sharrow-Engineering-Propeller

 

[FSH 210 Sport]

Another milestone set by Sharrow props. This time with a 64% gain in mpg.

https://boattest.com/article/sharrow-props-made-heavy-outboard-cruisers?utm_medium=email&_hsmi=224394217&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-9Pk_bk6bVaa_x5_wnWNq-pX7vhGLA9gyYRXpNkKzZRhLQnRo_tKAtgm7ApqXDNwhAuyMOuVkW0dOwpOB899FndGhp7Fg&utm_content=224394217&utm_source=hs_email

 

[Ohio]

Looks like a lot of people are taking advantage of the Sharrow propeller.

Apparently a lot of people think these $5000 a piece props are worth the squeeze. On the World Cat boat these props increased range by 86 miles, from 282 to to 368, a 30.5% increase. I personally would get the props just for the increase in range.

https://boattest.com/Sharrow-Engineering-Propeller

That was a pretty cool side by side comparison. Without research like this, it is all hype. Seems to be a legit prop.