Electrolysis and Your Props

The purpose of the shore power ground lead is to provide a return path for current if there is a short circuit or power leakage from an appliance or the wiring on the boat.

There are other sources of electrolysis that you can't correct. The boats on each side of you in the marina may be connected together through the dock ground lead and one may be eating up the zincs rapidly on the other. If you sit between them, this current may take a short cut by going in an item near one boat and exiting via your zinc near the other. This will eat up your zinc too, even though you are not connected to the other boats. The best solution here us to use zinc fish while you are at the dock. They are large lumps of zinc, often cast in the shape of a fish, that are cheaper and easier to replace than the zincs on your shaft.

The "fish" come with a copper wire already attached which is also used to hang them in the water. They have an alligator clip on the end of the wire and this should be connected to the negative bonding circuit on your boat. If it is not conveniently available in the cockpit in the vicinity of the prop, you might consider installing a stainless bolt for clipping it to, with the head of the bolt inside the deck connected to the negative bonding system. Clipping it to the shrouds or railing will only work if somewhere on the boat the shrouds are connected to this boat negative bonding system.

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