Competition in self adhesive copper bottom market

[jfm]

There are now two layers in the self adhesive copper bottoming market. See p56/7of the new (June 04) MBY. There's an article on a UK firm supplying self-adhesive copper sheets to stick on the bottom of your boat instead of antifoul paint. Deja vu.

The firm is <A target="_blank" HREF=http://www.eco-sea.com>http://www.eco-sea.com</A>. There's a pic in MBY of a 40foot Astondoa sheathed in copper. Actually this EcoSea stuff has a clever feature - the copper is cut into mosaic tiles on a flexible backing so it can be stretched to fit around compound curves. Then you have to grout the cracks, which sounds a bit dodgy but I would want to see the finished result. Also they use copper with a bit of nickel, instead of pure copper.

It looks like EcoSea have been quietly developing this product for a while, but do you think they brought forward the press launch to compete with TCM's project?

<hr width=100% size=1>

 

[BrendanS]

Been round for quite a while, so don't know why they are press releasing now. I listed them along with all the other options when tcm originally started looking at copperbot and others

<A target="_blank" HREF=http://www.ybw.com/cgi-bin/forums/showthreaded.pl?Cat=&Board=mby&Number=419845&page=&view=&sb=&o=&vc=1#Post419845>http://www.ybw.com/cgi-bin/forums/showthreaded.pl?Cat=&Board=mby&Number=419845&page=&view=&sb=&o=&vc=1#Post419845</A>

<hr width=100% size=1>Catapultam habeo. Nisi pecuniam omnem mihi dabris, ad caput tuum saxum immane mittam.

 

[Deleted User YDKXO]

Yes, I believe they have been panicked into early product release by the massive publicity surrounding the launch of tcm's new copper plating system. In fact it's conceivable that tcm's bottom will be the star of this Saturday's celebrity packed Mercury meet. I'm sure that this will be just the start along the road to global domination and a billion dollar stock market listing for tcm. I'd invest in his venture myself but I'm a bit borassic this month

<hr width=100% size=1>

 

[tcm]

Ecosea was recently bought out in the uk, i think, hence more interest/publicity of late.

The stuff is more heavily advertised etc abroad, eg palma boat show last weekend there was a stand showing the stuff. Cos peeps with boats abroad have loads of loot, praps. There are dealers around and about.

Costs for ecosea thingy are £110 per sq metre, fitted nearer £190 psm, hence D2 would have been neasr £20grand eek instead of materials 4.5k plus a lot of hamburgers for your mates. However, ecosea thingy is guaranteed up to 40 knots for five years, whereas no guarantee on the pure DIY copper. For planing boat, hul sq metres is approx loa x beam.

The mosaics look ok, but would seem iffy on chines etc - with nickel the stuff is not at all bendy but like er bits of stiff metal each about 2x2mm square, hence going around chines means you bend the mosaic at the joins. Nice gentle compound curves on a sailing boat are easy peasy in either (hard) cupro-nickel mosaics or (malleable) 100% annealed copper.

Effects of underwater damage to the boat remains an unknown. Eg, what happens wghen you drive over a few fishing nets and then a big pallet like what i did near barcelona - dodged the first two and few looked behind to see what we'd missed and oops crunched the third. On ecosea, warm air gun to 80 degrees to rip the damaged gear off, then patch it up. hence longterm guarante a bit irrelevant if hitting things needs a reapir and aha well tough yerv buisted yer guarantee

Main main prob is for heavier boats rather than lighter ones - the slings are the same but the pressure on the slings and hence on the copper is that much higher as well.

Confession: moderate cockup on copper stickering means that i have to haul out in UK. I stuck direct to stainless, but shouldn't have. Also, multilayering where the slings go ain't that clever - the layers end up making the copper a bit spongy hence more damage, not nec. less.

Planning haulout therefore on 24th is may for redoing the bodged bit, and pulling hair out at total ballsup. However, careful work was done by Coliholic and Talbot from hereabouts, so it it's all fallen off, then erm it sort-of shouldn't have.

Question: would whamming along in bit 23 metre boat necesarily be harder test than 23 footer? Surely the pressure/shock/forces on each little bit would be the same? Maybe.

Anyhow, i reckon walloping along 800 miles in a 23m over a few pallets etc will be one heck of a test. Note also for uk-based boats this may not be a goer - grinding of any part of the hull against fender and then harbour wall cd easily loosen the mosaics or sticky-on pure copper.

Cupronickel is a harder material, but not so barnacle-resistant i understand as pure copper. Though harder cupronickel might well be better for use on slings.

Ecosea use cupronickel cos if you wanted to make summink barnecle resistant you would use that material - copper is too ductile and weak. OTOH, if you wanted to just stik summink to a grp boat surface i reckon pure copper wd be better cos not so stiff innit so wd bend to the surface.

I think the Astondoa in the pics is a bit of photoshop. in reall life, copper is manky greenish brownish not bright shiny gold glistening through the sea.





<hr width=100% size=1>

 

[MainlySteam]

<<<Question: would whamming along in bit 23 metre boat necesarily be harder test than 23 footer? Surely the pressure/shock/forces on each little bit would be the same? Maybe>>>

I think I now allow myself to be convinced by the naval architects on this - slamming forces decrease with displacement so one would assume that the copper will do better on a bigger boat from that point of view.

My own question - do many with MoBo's with regularly used faster vessels (say over 20 something knots) use the self polishing antifoulings such as Intersleek over there?

John

<hr width=100% size=1>

 

[jfm]

Eek you have researched this a lot. Yes the mosaic would be iffy near spray rails and chines, because material creases along the mosaic joints, rather than bending the actual copper bits themselves. That sounds a mess. But judging by the right hand pic in MBY they only use the mosaic on flat areas, all the chines (4 inches either side) and the spray rails are done in simple sheet like D2, not the mosaic.

The website is photoshop but there are better pics in MBY. I gotta say, the D2 job looks every bit as neat, if not neater, than the Astondoa in the pic.

When the Zevenstar ship arrives in Soton you will have minimum 2 hours while D2 is sitting there chocked on deck. More if they have a deck full and you are not first to unload. could you fix the copper then? Will be nice and dry. You might have nearly all day as you will likely be last to unload, as they will lift D2 with 2 cranes which are not at all Cat5ed together so the 2 drivers have to yell at each other left a bit right a bit, oops.

PS there is a complaint letter on the MBY letters page, some git is replying now to an column last Autumn (keep up at the back) that said that captains are a bit lazy and all you need is an Emma, I mean hostess. He says the article is destroying the mobo industry or something. So, that's told you off and put yur in yer place

<hr width=100% size=1>

 

[tcm]

drift: self-polishing antifoul

there is a tendency for some yards and manufacturers to use hard (non-eroding) afoul on planing boats. But imho they are wrong cos

a) even that loony jfm has only been at 34 knots a teeny bit
b) most powerboats don't go very far really and lots of them secretly bimble about at only slightly faster than sailing boats, not 40 sodding knots all the time.
c) the self-eroding afoul ain't very very self eroding really, cos otherwise it would all erode in abot 10 mins. Fawirline use self-eroding which is the right thing. By contrast, Rodriguez use hard afouling with special barncle spores added it seems such that woosh 2 weeks later the hull is the colour of a rich tea biscuit.

if you want a loadof barnacles, get the hard antifould. If you want fewer, with half chance that they might fall off, use self-eroding. But with a really determined barncle as most of them are, they will hand onto the soft stuff somehow: you can scrape the barnecles better with hard afoul, but not so much work needed with soft. But of course with soft afoul the water will cloud up with scrubbing underneath and be a bit poisonous with the consequential yerknow, dying thing.

Drift opportunity: can you cook barnacles and make soup? I saw "barnacle soup" in a restaurant but it sounded a bit crunchy. Also, specty this is the sort of wiffy thing longjohnsilver might get involved in - ok diving for scallops but might be a bit ghastly to make soup from his hull scrapings. or perhaps I should scoff loads of barncle soup, and then people would pay to scrape the barncles off and make soup, problem solved, until they all died from nasty hull paint poisoning. But perhaps it might be addictive, like ciggies, so once had some barncale soup they would crave the stuff.

Drift opp 2 : where do all the barncles go if they can't sit on my boat? Do they die which is a bit horrid of me. Or do they all sit on some poor gits boat over there, and so soon anyone without copper will find three tons of barnecle on and sink?



<hr width=100% size=1>

 

[longjohnsilver]

Goose Barnacles

Yes they can be eaten, regularly harvested in Spain see <A target="_blank" HREF=http://www.westcoastaquatic.ca/article_love_barnacles.htm>here</A>.

Haven't tried them myself but they are supposed to make good eating. But not as good as scallops.................

<hr width=100% size=1>

 

[Talbot]

Re: drift: self-polishing antifoul

In my first year of boat ownership, I put International Cruiser Superior on the hull. This was totally too weak, and 18 months later when I haulled out, I had barnacles that were more than 2 inches long on places of the hull. The boat was floating considerably lower in the water, and there was aconsequent effect on performance. I have used top quality eroding A/F ever since

<hr width=100% size=1>

 

[MainlySteam]

Re: drift: self-polishing antifoul

The antifoul I was thinking of is the hard silicony stuff about the same cost as its weight in gold which the critters can't hold onto above around 20 or so knots and so just fall off whenever you go for a ride. Is widely used on fast commercial vessels and lasts for years, but does get overwhelmed if you don't go for rides often enough.

It would also have the side benefit of not poisoning the barnacles which go into the soup.

When you talk of barnacle problems - are they the conventional volcano type barnacles or the goose type barnacles on fleshy stalks - neither of which seem to be much of a problem here.

John

<hr width=100% size=1>

 

[Deleted User YDKXO]

Re: Goose Barnacles

Yes and Jeremy Clarkson gobbled some whilst he was pratting around Spain in an E type on telly recently so they must be OK. Since watching the programme and now that I'm in Spain I've been regularly harvesting barnacles from my transom and sprinkling them on my breakfast cornflakes. They're a bit crunchy but packed with nutrients such as Soltron residue

<hr width=100% size=1>

 

[tcm]

Re:lazy skippers

hm will have to see the mby pics. cupronickel isn't bendy really, so they can't have sheets of that imho?

slagoffwise i had better have a look. I met someone at a party in palma, christinansen summink was one person who wrote to mby a while back. At the time of his slagging of the article we were standing next to a mangusta 72 which had 2 crew who hadn't washed the sidepods of the boat since the red rain had been along 2 days earlier, nor done a hull clean for a while on a flippin boatshow boat for which rodriguez had booked 2spaces and left one empty so peeps could see the side of the boat. Also the teak on the interior bit of deck of the mangusta had been shagged/ridgeified by brushing. Also the crew walked on and off the boat in same shoes as on the tarmac. Oh, and the chrome on the taps in the bbq area had gone all corrodified cos they had not put any wd40 onnem over winter, which might be a prob for peeps covering up their boat completely overwinter with the air underneath getting nice anxd warm during the day and then water condensing overnite on the inside area esp the fast-cooling bits like taps and all other metal things with no chance of drying out cos all stays under the cover.

So anyway, not destroying the mobo industry at all imho, only destroying the nerks who destroy the boats with brushes in the wrong places, and not cleaning the harder bits in the right places.

Anyway, the christiansen chap was dead against the nerk who wrote all that stuff, and i pretended it most certainly was not me wot wrote it. Although lots of other skippers hav said how it is all true.

Note how skipper qualifying is YM. This a bit like becoming qualified as a bus driver, getting to places without crashing. But then, skippering is also being responsible for looking after the bus, orgainsing the routes, maintaining the bus and so on. Also, a very expensive bus, and being allowed to whack at it with mops and brushes. The interviewing is seeing if they are nice people, rather then how wd you look after this xmillion pound boat matey which is 97% of the job. Quite suprising that so many are any good at it really.


<hr width=100% size=1>

 

[tcm]

silicon shiny antifoul

hm. Well, i reckon that must be a bit rubbish cos frexample, even on supershiny things the barnacles wd still catch hold of the surface imperfections cos applied by roller, no? But agreed if the silicon surface was very teflony like a saucepan. Perhaps someone in a v barnacly area can dangle a saucepan in the water and then run it under a tap....

yep, our barnacles are volcano type, not sure what they taste like. They are very local - even different parts of the same marina.



<hr width=100% size=1>

 

[Forbsie]

Re: silicon shiny antifoul

I left a teflon-coated pan under a drip in my cabin for a couple of weeks. When I got back the inside was coated with orange barnacly looking things. No idea how these things come from rainwater but they added an interesting texture to the lobster bisque. /forums/images/icons/laugh.gif

<hr width=100% size=1>

 

[Sunnyseeker]

I've just read something about safeboatskin?? clear wax coating with anti foul very green and friendly but clear and slippery? sound good to me....cant remember the web site but I guess you might find it with googly

<hr width=100% size=1>

 

[MainlySteam]

Re: silicon shiny antifoul

Intersleek, for example, is well regarded commercially for fast boats (20 something knots plus) and I am familiar with boats using it in the tropics and in temperate waters. Boat has to be regularly run though.

Will be with a bunch of clients and naval architects next week who use/specify it and will see if they have anything to say about the grippiness of barnacles on it. All just in case your copper falls off (sorry, the debil made me say that) or in case anyone else interested.

While there are frequent mentions of anti fouling on this forum I have not seen these non-stick silicone coatings mentioned.

John

<hr width=100% size=1>

 

[MainlySteam]

Re: silicon shiny antifoul and barnacles

The experience of those I talked to was that these antifoulings are completely successful in defeating barnacles - provided you run the boat at speed every day. Give the baby barnacles a couple of days to get grip and they stick.

So, an excuse to go for a boat ride every day /forums/images/icons/smile.gif.

John

<hr width=100% size=1>