>I am curious, how many listees have had netting or line foul their prop? Just wondering if it is a common problem. We've had a crab pot line snag on our port rudder. Fortunately it did not get into the prop. We were eventually able to clear it with a long boathook. The huge amount of debris in the northern waters of the PNW is the reason prudent boaters keep a very sharp watch from the helm even if the boat is running on autopilot. Avoidance is the only sure line of defense against logs, deadheads, errant crab and shrimp pot lines, old nets, etc. We removed the autopilot from our boat when we bought it for several reasons, and we have since found that, in the waters we frequent, we would problably have rarely used it anyway as we are constantly making heading changes to avoid debris in the water. As things like deadheads rarely make themselves visible until you are almost on top of them, it can take a very fast reaction with the wheel to avoid them. Using the manual disconnect and steer feature of an autopilot would not be fast enough in many of these cases, I believe. We've also had several instances of getting various kinds of debris wound around the prop of our narrowboat in the UK. However clearing the prop is a very easy process on these boats as I described in a previous post. ____________________ C. Marin Faure GB36-403 "La Perouse" Bellingham, Washington