Barnacles - just on surface ?

[rickwat]

- or do they penetrate gel coat and further if not regularly removed? Also having scraped the top off does the residue have to be removed completely as I always fear doing worse damage by heavy scraping ?

Thanks in advance for any responses.

Rick

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[graham]

I dont know if they can actually penetrate the gelcoat but I remember a time when a group of us hired a powerful industrial jetwasher to clean the bottom of our boats.

All the boats except one were fine. THe jet cleaned off all growth and loose antifoul in no time.

On one boat the barnacles were coming off and pulling a tiny circle of gelcoat with them so we had to stop and scrape them off which did not do any further damage.

At that time the river our boats were in suffered only light barnacle growth due to freshwater content at low water so some boats did not use antifoul at all .I think that with a layer of antifoul between the boat and the barnacle then no damage will occur with careful scraping.

To be safer file the corners of your scraper round to prevent any scratching .

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