Taking my little electric “center console” out on Town Lake last week made it very clear very quickly that floating plants on the surface (“fanwort,” apparently: Beneficial plant takes hold in Lady Bird Lake ) are A Problem for motorized vessels. You couldn’t go ten feet in some places without your prop getting hopelessly tangled and needing to be pulled up and de-fouled again. I wonder if there is some way one could think of to basically “rake up” the plants in front of you before they get to your propeller blades; not looking to clear it out, obviously, as it’s clearly very beneficial, but the stuff on the surface is on its way to being dead anyway since it is actually a rooted plant normally.
Thoughts? Chicken wire hung off the front or something? Would then need some easy/quick way to pull it up, clear it and put it back down.
ETA: wait, no, the culprit was apparently hydrilla, which is an invasive species and should be destroyed at every opportunity! Hydrilla - Wikipedia
Occasionally they reduce the level of Lake Austin to try to control hydrilla. Last time was 2016. I haven’t hear about any actions for Lady Bird Lake, ever.
Here’s a link on hydrilla from LCRA.
One of the side benefits of the newly invented high efficiency, low noise toroidal propeller is also a significantly better resistance to tangling
There are tools to generate 3d printable propellers for air or water, but water props for high hp motors generally need to be stronger than FDM will make. A smaller trolling motor might do great with one, though.