Antifoul for a mud berth

[gjeffery]

I moor on a 3/4 tide (B3) mooring in Chichester. We lifted the (twin keel) boat out last week and the yard commented on the staining, mainly on the keels, where the boat settles into the mud.

Antifoul this year is Blakes Titan blue, over epoxy. but it has gone green where it is stained.

1) does the staining matter?
2) is there a preferred antifoul for use in mud?
3) has Chichester any local condition (eg like effect of mud on galvanising) that requires a special antifoul?

I understand that Titan is now banned but Blakes are marketing a oermitted alternative for next season.

Any advice would be appreciated.

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[ditchcrawler]

On my twin keeler which sits in the mud for half the tide,I get an orangey mark on the part that is in the mud,as does everyone else in my area.(East Coast Blackwater).It does not do any harm & after jet washing I antifoul over.I used to use Titan now I use Seajet 033 erodable which seems to be a bit harder than Titan.Some people use a hard antifouling ie not self eroding(self polishing) type,but I have found the eroding type OK.If you want to use a hard antifoul the makers recommend you strip the eroding type off first .This is hard work & most eroding types work OK in mud berths.The best type for your area will be advised by others.It seems that non of them work perfectly & a bit of trial & error is advised.This year seems worse than ever,wonder if it's as a result of the hot weather.We seem to have a few growths I have not seen before.

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[Guest]

Antifoul ....

Most use pretty standard a/f - mostly of self-eroding type to reduce the scraping etc.

My bilge keeler has been in drying moorings for years and I use the cheapest a/f I can get !!!! I don't race - so don't need hard racing, I sit deep in mud when tide goes out - it seems to rub a lot of the rubbish off, I'm a cheap-skate - but my boat looks like most others when she comes out !!

OK I have an underside that is black stained - common on grounding boats that spend a lot of time in the mud. I have grass around the upper waterline areas - common on boats around me even those that religously scrape, coat and coat and coat etc.

Last winter she came out for first time in nearly 3 years ...... looked better than a pals who had been in only for the latter part of the season and he had a 'professionally applied' scheme .....

A lot of advice is available on a/f ...... look around at other boats, ask around and you will find a mix of all sorts - as well as many who advise but don't actually use it themselves !!!!


<hr width=100% size=1>Nigel ...
Bilge Keelers get up further ! I only came - cos they said there was FREE Guinness !

 

[Mudplugger]

Re: probs with A/F and sitting in mud....Fin Keeler sitting on R.Colne. in exceeding shitty water, tried eroading, the best!!?....absolutely useless, worn off after 3 weeks, where hull in contact with mud. Best answer I came across was VC17 Teflon, worked well for the last three years, This year have had to scrub twice but the teflon makes it a lot easier to get clean....Goes on very thinly so you don't get a build-up of old a/f. If bilge keels only in mud, try Hard A/F on keels and eroding type on hull. That way should get best of both worlds.

<hr width=100% size=1>Tony W.

 

[Guest]

we race a fin keeler and it dries out sometimes, we use soft and very erodabl racing optima, we don't often drie out but when we do the a/f is so soft that the tide washes it off very slowly, cleaning it yesterday we found barnacles growing ON barnacles only after about 6 weeks from the last clean off!

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[quaelgeist2]

VC 17m works fine on EastCoast mud (Medway).

If the mud has built up some layers, the teflon element make it wash of quickly when sailing. No growth from April to Oct.

The catch: You need to start all over again from gelcoat or epoxy as it wouldn't stick on any other antifouling than VC 17m/offshore etc. as a base.

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[Mirelle]

Adding or subtracting?

It seems that, in some places, maybe most, mud fetches off soft antifouling, but certainly at the top of the Deben we get the opposite problem - concretion on top of the a/f. This seems to be a sort of lime scale - we are a "hard water area" and I wonder if this - the fresh water entering the estuary - may be the cause.

Anyway, the only way to get it off is with a scraper!

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[VicS]

Re: A kind of limescale

Andrew, I think what you see is 'sea mat', small animal life which forms colonies. I used to get it a fair bit in Chichester but I haven't noticed it so much recently. Nothing to do with fresh water as far as I know. Sea water is very hard compared with any fresh water flowing into the river.

<hr width=100% size=1><font color=purple>Ne te confundant illegitimi.</font color=purple>

 

[Mirelle]

Re: A kind of limescale

Thanks, Vic.

Interesting. It is confined to the parts that are in contact with mud over the winter; it does not form on the boat's underwater surfaces whilst she is afloat in spring, summer and autumn, or on the area between the mud line and the waterline, which is, of course, wet twice a day in the mud berth.

It is hard to shift (you need a scraper, on soft a/f) and a lot of people just paint over it. I have gone to the (quite considerable!) trouble of getting all the old eroding a/f off and using hard racing, as Blakes recommend, and it had better work....I hope to scrub it off in the spring!

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[andyball]

Re: A kind of limescale

A friend's deep keel yacht got a very hard brown "scale" on top of the antifouling after less than year in a mud berth in Chichester Harbour, & as you say, very hard to shift.

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[Cantata]

Re: A kind of limescale

We get exactly this problem, we keep our boat in Oare Creek near Faversham. Agree it seems like a kind of scale deposit. There is very little fresh water coming into the top of this creek. What's worse, barnacles grow on the scale between the keels, despite a July scrub - someone said that if you get the young barnacles off by mid-season, you don't get any more. Oh yes we do.
Tried all sorts of a/f, am inclined to think they are a waste of time and money on the areas that sink in the mud as they rapidly get covered in the 'scale'.

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[dancrane]

Re: A kind of limescale

October 5th 2019

I'd like to know what contributors here, have learned about mudberth antifouling since 2003, and what they're using now.

I'm sure the deadliness of available paintable toxins has diminished for environmental legal reasons in sixteen years, but the science ought to have developed too. Newer threads on the same subject certainly aren't conclusive.

 

[pvb]

Re: A kind of limescale

I think 16 years may well be a record for a phoenix post!

 

[Kukri]

Re: A kind of limescale

Gave up. Now keep a different boat in a marina.

 

[langstonelayabout]

Re: A kind of limescale

1 Does staining matter? No.
2 Preferred antifoul? In Portsmouth harbour I always found the International Micron best.
3 Chichester is a high fouling area, similar to Portsmouth. I found the same antifouling worked fine at Langstone too, although it did wear off the botton of my lift keeled boat on it’s drying mooring (soft antifouling).

Miracle new ingredient? They all have one, every year. I was never a great fan of Blakes but international Micron was the best and lasted until August before needing a scrub. Coppercoat was a waste of space.

But when you say mud berth, do you mean mud berth or a half tide (drying) mooring? International Micron would be fine for a drying mooring (based on my experience) but if you are in a mud berth for the winter don’t bother, just crane out in the spring and clean off and apply new antifouling.

 

[Stemar]

Re: A kind of limescale

I've given up on it. Jissel spends a couple of hours a tide in Portsmouth mud and nothing seems to work, so I scrub off a couple of times a season - easy for me with a bilge keeler as my club has cheap scrubbing grids.

 

[martinriches]

my boats on a half tide berth on the medway and I get good results from this:https://premiermarinepaints.co.uk/semi-hard-antifouling-paint

 

[GTom]

Re: A kind of limescale

I use the cheapest Hempel, applied every spring. Not much sea life in North Wales though.

 

[dancrane]

Re: A kind of limescale

Thanks for replying gentlemen. If I'm still here, I'll ask again in 2035.