Antifoul - hard vs soft? Self-polishing??

[demonboy]

We're not far off from antifouling the boat and I'm about to purchase my paint. The cheapie stuff over here in Turkey is Tecno Marin, almost half the price of International. I'm not even going to entertain the idea of buying International because budget won't allow and I don't believe something that cost twice as much will stay on the boat for twice as long or be twice as effective.

What is the difference is between hard and soft paint and which one I should I go for? What is self-polishing in terms of its performance?

Bear in mind the boat will be in the water for at least six months with one lift in between, and then back in again for the foreseeable future. It will lie in the eastern med and at anchor for much of the time, sailing/motoring from anchorage to anchorage. I have no problems swimming around the boat to give it a scrape every two weeks or so, which seemed to work well last time (though I don't know what antifoul it had on).

 

[demonboy]

Oh, and whilst we're on the subject, how many coats of primer should I apply? One or two?

 

[ccscott49]

OK, second question first, 1 coat, now first question, I use soft ablative antifouling, with at least three coats on the waterline which I can scrub, not too hard, three or four times a year. I antifoul once evry two years. Hard racing antifoul or prop antifoul on the prop(s). You ca use whatever you like, but use the cheapest, nastiest, because in the meddy it dont matter, it will get fouled!
I guess that in UK lots use hard racing, so they can scrub mid season or twice a season, but then they do theres evry year. It's up to you really.

Hrad is hard and can be scrubbed, soift is ablative and can be scrubbed, but not hard. Self polishing, I guess is basically the same as soft ablative.
Hope this helps your decision making.

Theres more guff about antifoul on these forums than anything else!

 

[demonboy]

Thanks for the info, Colin. It confirms what I suspected and reaffirms what I was planning.

I take issue with the 'more guff about antifoul on these forums than anything else' comment though. You've read the anchor threads, haven't you /forums/images/graemlins/wink.gif

 

[ccscott49]

NO!!! Stopped reading anchor threads ages ago, when the two anchorites started having their spats, handbag fights, toys all over the floor and dummies spat out!

 

[vyv_cox]

I use both, with similar intentions to Colin. I paint the top foot or so with hard scrubbable. This allows me to swim round the boat every so often, scrubbing the fouling that tends to accumulate there without colouring the water or removing valuable paint. I paint the rest with eroding a/f. In the Med the fish take care of much of the fouling here and I have found that a light wipe over with my hand when swimming once or twice in a season will bring it back to virtually as new.

I have been using Hempels hard racing and find it very effective at keeping weed at bay but a small amount of shell will grow on it. This is easily removed. For erodable I use the cheapest I can get, this year it will be Screwfix. For 35 ft I can get away with two 750 ml tins of Hempels and 2.5 litres of eroding, but I don't do the keel as this was Copperboted years ago and is still surviving.