I know it wasn't caught on the rudder, because I could pull the line to the side a little and could see it clear. Also there was no torque on the rudder (a spade). We do have a fin keel, but it is pretty low aspect with a sloping leading edge, no geek, hard to imagine how a line could get caught there. The new prop is an Autostream, this has blades that look "catchy". In fact we caught more weed on it than the old Variprop, I think, and as I recounted in the tale of woe, we already had a fishing net on it before we got caught on the pot! Its also three blade, so no way you can hide the blades. Unfortunately being a saildrive, there is no way to rotate the coupling (no coupling) other than start the engine and put it in gear - which I was reluctant to do under the circumstances. We did come loose a while after i shifted the transmission to neutral, it only makes sense that we were hung on the saildrive. But if was hard to tell at the time, and even a close examination of the drive after we hauled was not illuminating.

I thought about resetting the mizzen to see if I could get a pirouette, but it would have been very difficult with the wind over the stern - the square head and full battens are guaranteed to hang up in the lazyjacks.

I think I will play around with a lobster buoy before we launch, I like that idea.

Note that the leading edge of the blade rakes forward.

Here is the underbody as it came out of the water in October: