If anyone ever is dubious about the strength of the Max Prop mechanism, you might want to show them this letter. A few weeks ago a Little Harbor 54 was coming into Philadelphia from New Zealand as deck cargo on a container ship. She was supposed to have been offloaded into the water and then come to our yard to be rigged. As they were lifting the yacht off the ship a sling broke, dropping her ten feet or so onto the concrete. The 31 ton yacht fell stern first, destroying the rudder, causing extensive hull damage and breaking one blade of the three-blade Max Prop. Believe it or not, the Max Prop mechanism still works perfectly! The yacht is several years old and has been cruised ten of thousands of miles, but the Max prop works as smoothly as if it had just been installed. And that is after taking an impact sufficient to snap one blade like a potato chip. That is one hell of a piece of machinery!