Alternative to Antifouling.

[Talbot]

With promises of warm weather, plenty of food and a little light work I was enveigled into assisting TCH try two new systems (further details at Removall 610. The recommendation was to use an airless sprayer, and this did provide a very consistent coating, but the machine we had was not up to the task and quickly became defective. We then applied the coating with a roller (not really thickly enough) and left overnight. The recommendation for getting rid of the resultant bubbled up paint is to use a pressure washer, but we were to close to another boat and the Yard Manager insisted that majority was scraped off (not hard, just laborious), before allowing the use of the pressure washer. Luckily there were not many coats on, so Removall managed to remove 95% of the anti-foulling following the final wash. The residue was removed by a little scrapeing and a wipe over with acetone (This would not have been at all necessary if we had merely been preparing for further coats of anti-fouling)

The anti-fouling system employed consists of the application of adhesive <A target="_blank" HREF=http://www.foil-specialists.co.uk/>Copper Sheets</A> cut from a 15cm wide roll. The sheets were overlapped so that the exposed edge was as far as possible always away from the waterflow through normal boating, and from slamming loads.
The copper should do very well against the barnacles, but I await with interest the effect on slime and weed. The initial effect appears to be to make the boat more slippery than anti-fouling and boat speed was increased by at least a knot. The biggest advantage is that this sytem is expected to last for at least 10 years and will not need sanding off at the end of the season like the copper powder/epoxy type coatings.

There are more details at <A target="_blank" HREF=http://www.ybw.com/cgi-bin/forums/showflat.pl?Cat=&Board=mby&Number=491183&page=0&view=collapsed&sb=5&o=93&part=>Mobo Forum</A>

There are pictures of the process <A target="_blank" HREF=http://www.arweb.co.uk/argallery/copperbottom>here</A>.

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[maxi]

Now here's a challenge. Will you come back to this forum and tell them whether abrading of the surface IS or is NOT necessary after a period of time.
I'll take a little bet with myself in the meantime.

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[Talbot]

Hopefully, I will retain contact with the owner of the boat, and get periodic updates to the utility of the copper. I am personnally interested as well. /forums/images/icons/smile.gif

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[tcm]

um, this isn't the first boat to have had this treatment. Provide you get good adhesion, reports from other boats are good, some (power) able to reach 38 knots, others (sail) abkle to race and beat others they could not beat even after two years with the copper.

Note that the whole idea is that the copper oxidizes - its that surface which the barnacles etc canot stand, not so much the shiny copper which of course fades only a few days after going back in. So abrading the surface most definitely NOT required.

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