The revolutionary no-blade Sharrow propellers, introduced just two years ago, are gaining in popularity and notoriety. Sharrow, which represents the first major design change in fixed props in a century, won an Innovation Award at the 2020 Miami show. And it just won another award, for Marine Power Innovation, at the latest one.
Sharrow, developed by Greg Sharrow, a graduate of the Berklee College of Music in Boston, basically solved the problem of cavitation in traditional props. His props use loops to produce thrust, not blades. The loops eliminate cavitation and vortices that form around traditional props, reducing their efficiency, power and control.
The new props are so effective that Yamaha signed a deal with Sharrow last summer to produce them at Yamaha’s plant in Greenfield, Indiana, for use in Yamaha outboards around the world. Sharrows also work with sterndrives and inboard drive trains.
Based in Detroit, Sharrow claims that its props either eliminate or greatly reduce cavitation, increase speed, produce longer range, provide up to 50 percent more reverse thrust to make docking easier, and are superior in handling tight turns. Boats with Sharrow props come up on plane faster, and they’re quieter, too. Independent testing has validated these advantages.
Greg Sharrow got the idea for the new props when he was working in video production and wanted to develop a quiet drone for the music industry. On a walk one day, he hit upon the idea that if he could eliminate tip vortices, he could reduce noise.
That was more than a decade ago. Sharrow worked on several models using CAD designs, and finally tested his idea at the University of Michigan Marine Hydrodynamics Laboratory in 2013.
The props are made by Sharrow Marine, a division of Sharrow Engineering. The parent company is developing high-tech propulsion technologies in the marine and aviation fields. Read more at http://sharrowmarine.com and see the video below:
