Antifoul recommendation question again...........sorry!!

[rwilson]

Good day to you all, I would like your recommendations/experiences for which antifoul I should use to suit to below vessel;

Vessel- Capelli 32 WA GRP sports boat 10m
Hull speed - max 40-44 knots
Cruising speed - around 28 knots
Location - marina berth Ocean Village, Southampton
Drive- twin outboards so leg/prop fouling not applicable

Your thoughts would be greatly appreciated as I have never antifouled the boat under my ownership due to dry-stacking it (OV next year all being well). My concern is selecting a product that wont erode too quickly given the vessels speed.

many thanks Richard

 

[NoviceRod]

I would recommend Coppercoat. It is more expensive to apply, but will be there for 10 years or more.

I am in 3rd season now - there some limited growth of slime, but it comes off quite easily.

Suggest you contact 'Elessar' of this parish for more info.

 

[gjgm]

Trilux is hard a/f. I am the other side of Soutampton Water and I don't get more than a bit of slime.

 

[wellf100]

I went with AquaCote on my sports fisher. https://www.aqua-cote.com/ It's not an antifoul but a 'foul release' as it is essentially a super slick silicone (i believe) which growth can't hold on to. The idea being any growth can be very easily wiped off or will fall off under speed. In theory it should last many years and was very easy to apply (1 base cote and 1 top coat). Aquacote claim it's good for an extra knot of speed as well due to it's super slick hydrophobic properties. My experiences are on the whole good. I've had the boat in the water since May and there was a light layer of slime and crusty growth but no impact on top speed. I anchored somewhere last week and swam around with a squeegy and cleaned it all off which was pretty easy. A lot of it you can wipe off by hand very simply. However there is a line of weed around the starboard stern quarter which seems to have beaten the system and is proved more tricky to remove. It required some more forceful action with the squeegy and i couldn't remove it fully so expect it to grow back fairly quickly. However it's possible that this may be due to a not-so-smooth second coat of top coat I put on around the waterline.

Being on tight budget and after completing the frankly miserable job of stripping off the old antifoul, I wanted the most cost affective multi year option. Traditional Coppercoat was out as I wanted a DIY solution and I looked at Reactive Resins Copper Coat. This looked good but was about twice the price of traditional antifoul and needed a lot of coats (4 or 5 I can't remember) and careful mixing and application times. With an introductory discount AquaCote came out at the same as Traditional Antifoul + primer. So in the end went with that mainly due to it's ease of application and the promise of multi year performance.

All in all, so far so good...it does what it says on the tin. But the real test will be over the next 6 months when the boat won't get so much use.

 

[rwilson]

Thanks Chaps.
Coppercoat, had thought about this but was worried about some instances where it does not work as per the makers claims, so had discounted it on the basis of not wanting it to be an expensive failure.

AquaCote, I think there was an article in a recent MBY magazine which sounded promising but didn't have any long term data so not ruled out totally!!

Standard Antifoul - Trilux, in all honestly for my first season in Soton I think I'll take this route. If a long term marina berth does not work out as intended, I will dry stack it again, so the smaller the capital outlay the better. There is a thin base layer of smooth AF on at present so I think I'll put the new stuff on top (if compatible) and at the end of next season re-look at my options.


Once again many thanks for your help

 

[rubberduck]

Get copper coat done properly & you won't regret it. I didn't have ours done by Elessar due to location, but he seems to be the man the amount of recommendations I have seen. (very happy with the guy who did ours but he is on the east coast)