Coppercoat banned in Netherlands?

[tangaroa]

I understand from a previous YBW posting that copper based anti-fouls are banned in the Netherlands on environmental grounds.

We're considering Coppercoat for our new boat (to be delivered next month) but as the Netherlands is one of our favourite cruising grounds, we do not wish to make ourselves enemies of the State.

Does anyone have any experience of how visiting coppercoated yachts are treated by the Dutch authorities?

 

[aluijten]

My guess is that visiting will never be a problem. It's only a problem for boats owned by Dutchies. For now there is an endless legal debate going on in Holland about antifoulings with copper. Officially it's forbidden, but the court has declared this law void untill a final statement has been reached by the court. So at the moment it's legal to use anitfoullings with copper but ONLY if they are approved by Duch law. As far as I know Coppercoat is not amongst those. But I vagely remember there is a company in Holland that wants to pick up distribution of Coppercoat in Holland. These guys should know all about it. Maybe the UK company for Coppercoat can tell you more about it.

As far as I understand the whole issue is more around freshwater areas where the authorities detected a too high copperoxide concentration. It's not a coastal water problem. However our gouvernment likes to think binary, so is yes for all or no for all.

Arno

 

[tangaroa]

There is a Dutch Coppercoat distributer: Coppercoat NL

 

[ghostwriter]

this should be no problem at all for you, applies only to Dutch based boats , don't know if it's Dutch citizens that counts, not being Dutch, my yacht was located in Netherlands until last year and I also was supposed not to use copperbased antifouling, at least that's what they told me overthere at the time

the excellent Dutch sailing mag. Zeilen (they outclass YM and YW hands down) had an article on it last month, the hilarious bit was even that they gave a couple of options for Dutch citizens to go round these laws, one of the options was simply to come and antifoul in Belgium or Britain and sail back , as there is no real control, you can also buy copperbased antifouling in Netherlands as long as you are able to convince the salesman that you're going to export it

all in all, if you just want to hop over as a furriner for some local cruising.... noooo problem at all

 

[aluijten]

Just as a matter of interest; why do you consider that 'Zeilen' outclasses 'YM'? I'm not so convinced myself...

Small example, they did a piece on anchors that consisted of copying data from quite a few other magazines, on itself not bad, but any active investigations to try to align the (sometimes) contradicting results was not there.

To the antifouling, there is a small selection of 'legal' copperbased available in Holland, it's quite expensive though. Going to Belgium not not stricktly needed, but it's cheaper.

Arno

 

[TigaWave]

There is another copper coat service that has been used in Amsterdam, I dont have the contact details but the company that was doing the work was linked to HITECMAR who operate mainly in Spain.
This system was apparently better and cheaper and available in Amsterdam, the classic sailing ship is Dutch.
http://www.hitecmar.com/index2.php?c=yachts_technology

 

[Sans Bateau]

Dutch friend of ours has a copper based antifuoling system, its like copper tiled, Cupro copper, I think its called. He keeps his boat in Hellevoetsluis, near Rotterdam.

This was done a couple of years ago. So what will happen, will he have to have it all stripped off and something else full of biocides painted on?

 

[Beagle]

Once again, it has been decided that it is 100% legal for a Dutchie (hey, that's me!!) to paint his mistress bottom with coppercoat anti-fouling.

It has never been "illegal" for foreigners to visit Holland with the forbidden paint on their yachts. As a matter of fact, quite a lot of Dutchmen did paint their yachts down in Belgium during the funny seasons.

Anyway, it has always been possible for us to buy coppercoat paint in Holand, you just had to order it from different companies (more or less direct line) since it has never been illegal for the professional boating industry.

In short: no worries! /forums/images/graemlins/wink.gif

 

[ghostwriter]

of course a part of it is personal taste...my view on Zeilen might be different than yours , over smaken en kleuren...

the article on anchors is just one example that I liked about Zeilen : I liked their approach of looking for a number of test on hand instead of doing yet another own test, compile them , find the differences, get conclusions out of all that etc... I do not think they did a stupid cut&paste job, there is some added value to it. it was a bit cheeky too...commenting on the way their collegues from other mags perform testing

also the boat testing on Zeilen I usually find better than on YW or YM , on these last mags (with all my respect to the Sheahans and Jermaines of the world) I always have the impression that the journo's do have to weight their words a bit, smoothen it, whereas on Zeilen...well, you know for yourself that Dutch people are more outspoken , when it's good they say it and when it's not good they shout it /forums/images/graemlins/wink.gif

and to my taste the variety and depth of subjects on Zeilen is better, would any of the UK mags have done such a long and wide story on the weather in the southern ocean like Zeilen did ? I doubt it.