Antifoul

[pessimist]

Just had the boat hauled for her annual scrub off. The good news - antifouling is not necessary. We had the boat copper coated 2 years ago and this is our second haul out. We've had a couple of sails this year and I believe this is why the results are better than last year. There was no shell fouling at all and very little weed fouling, just slime really. The parts of the boat which were not copper coated, skeg shoe; prop cutter etc, were heavily fouled with both shell and weed.

There are some piccies here coppercoat

If anyone cares I have more pictures but took the first lot in "raw" mode and don't have the software to decode them with me at the moment.

I'm a very happy bunny, if this lasts as long as it should I'll be in pocket and I won't have had to antifoul.

Usual disclaimers and stuff - I have no interest in this treatment other than as a happy punter.

 

[alec]

This kind of feedback is very useful. Thanks.

Did you have it applied by a yard or was it DIY ?

Results seem to be a bit mixed when done by ourselves.

Regards,

 

[TimfromMersea]

Dear Pessimist,

Where's your boat kept? Your profile doesn't say, you see. I too applied Coppercoat last year and the result was spectacularly useless! I had 4 scrubs in the season and when hauled she was thick with barnacles and weed. After much correspondence with the Coppercoat people, including a rather 'strained' visit to their Boat Show stand, they told me that there were three problems.

Firstly, we had used 'radiator sized' rollers and apparently the extra rotation speed of these had buried the copper too deep.

Secondly, the coating had been applied in weather that was on the limit cold wise and this had caused the coating to set very slowly and consequently be very hard.

Thirdly we needed to rub it down before launch to 'activate' the coating.

Whether you believe this or not the fact is there was nothing in the instructions about any of this, other than a suggestion that boats being launched in high fouling areas would 'benefit from' a light rub down of the coating before launch, to activate it earlier.

I rubbed it down well as they suggested and she was launched in the third week of April. So far as can be seen from the dinghy, it seems better this year. However I have a 'summer scrub' booked next week, before a regatta that we are going to on the Orwell, and I shall be there with my camera to see what is on the boat as she comes out of the water. I'll post again with the news.

West Mersea is a high fouling area (perhaps as it is an arable farming area and there's lots of nitrate run off into the water) and nothing really seems to work here. As soon as we find something that works they ban it! Remember the good old days, when if you got some antifouling paint on your skin whilst doing the boat, it raised a huge red weal? Now it seems you can spray it all over yourself - maybe even drink it - and it seems to do no harm. That's how you can tell it's no good.

Let's see how the Coppercoat compares.

 

[pessimist]

Had it professionally applied - we'd heard too many horror stories about self application. We were lucky that it was applied in a climate controlled shed at no extra cost - it was the only spare room that the yard had.

Glad you found the feed back useful.

 

[pessimist]

Sorry about that - we keep her in the lower reaches of the Dart on the Kingswear side.

This is a relatively high fouling area but probably not as bad as yours. We used to keep a boat on the Swale, across the estuary from you and often felt that we might as well have coated the boat with Dulux!

Your point about activation is interesting, Im sure that our fouling last year was worde than this, I wonder if it took a few months for ours to be activated? We wondered whether we would have to abrade the surface this year, but probably won't bother now.

I should also say that I have spoken to others in the river who have had far less satisfactory experiences. One chap overcoated with traditional antifouling last year! So far all of those I have spoken to who have had less than satisfactory results have applied the coating thenselves. I don't know if this is significant or not - I believe the product is recommended for diy application and know of one person who applied it himself and reports satisfactory results other than in the tropics!

I have heard dark rumours of "duff" batches but have no idea whether there is any truth in them.

It seems almost impossible to predict when the treatment works and when it doesn't, I'm glad that mine did and hope yours does too.

Cheers

Colin

 

[Sans Bateau]

We are now in our second season with Coppercote. We originally relaunched April 2005. Scrubbed off in Sept 2005, then our latest scrub in May 2006.

We are in a marina in Chichester Harbour, so the water has little movement, in the harbour is muddy.

We applied the Coppercote ourselves. The key here is sticking rigidly to the instructions. We had the hull grit blasted first then applied 2 coats of ME100 epoxy before the Coppercoat.

We found on both scrubs that there was no sign of shell growth, just weed and this mainly at water line, looks horrendous from above the water!

This photo shows the keel before and after pressure washing, the front has yet to be blasted. Note the bit of blue eroding A/F where the keel sat on a block, the A/F being painted on as the boat was lifted prior to relaunch!

It has to be said that although the bottom remains shell free, there is a marked difference in speed when the hull is clean, much the same as any a/f really though. Difference is twice a season we will have to sit on a grid and scrub off but we will not have the expense of lifting out during winter months or the cost and time of traditional antifouling.

 

[pessimist]

Curiouser and curiouser. Your photographs are a dead ringer for ours. I had come around to the view that the tidal flow, which can be quite strong in the Dart, was helping our cause. You have no tidal flow but still a good result. My brain hurts.