Coppercoat. Is it worth it ?

Frogmogman

Frogmogman

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Inspired by mention of coppercoat in the thread about GHA’s welcome return to the forum, I wonder what those of you have gone down this route have to say about it.

My nearly new boat was epoxy painted when new prior to being anti fouled. I’m wondering whether to have it stripped back and copper coated this winter instead of just redoing the antifoul. The boat is kept on a pontoon in a very tidal marina at Saint Quay Portrieux.

Any views ?
 
Yes. With proviso - application is the key to success and winter is not the best time to do it as it is temperature and moisture critical so best applied late spring early summer if in the open. However you can get all the prep done which can be tedious if you are going to remove the AF manually and try and retain the epoxy coating. Blasting has its merits but requires skill from the operator to remove just the AF. Other proviso is if you have an iron keel which is difficult to get clean to the standard required without blasting and immediately epoxy coating (5 or 6 coats!).

If done properly you can look forward o up to 10 years with only an annual pressure wash. Actual antifouling properties is variable, just like conventional AF but usually adequate.
 
YES, but as @Tranona says make sure you get it done in a yard that has a good reputation. I had mine done mid summer at Mylor in Cornwall who spray it on in a shed.

While Coppercoat say its a DIY job I don't consider it to be.
 
Yes - had it on 2 boats - DIY applied both times - never again - very, very very hard work by roller.

As the others have said application is key... and conditions have to be good (humidity / temp etc).

get a pro yard to do the job and make sure you understand what the is the correct procedure and the correct ambient conditions so that you can be certain that the job is being done correctly
 
I agree with all the comments above. I would have it done again on the new boat if I could, but it’s aluminium, so a big no- no :-(
 
I had mine done in January 8 years ago. Six days in a heated shed (after blasting) to dry out. Meticulous filling of every tiny hole in gel coat. Six days in the shed to dry out. Let me work on the boat too. Still as good as new. Power washed off, no abrading. Cost now saved in haul outs and AF.
Cast iron keel not done. Quick job.
 
It's a none too difficult DIY job, no problem if you're capable of following instructions. I'd be more worried about paying silly money to some "professional" who then mucks it up, as with Coppercoat application about 50% of them seem to do just that. This then ends in endless discussions and sometimes the non-remedy of applying it the same wrong way again. If you're too lazy/unfit to do it yourself, make sure you find someone with a proven track record of getting it right.

The removal of more than a decade of old antifoul prior to applying the CC however was a bone breaking horror job that I don't want to do again. Although it seems nobody else wants to either, so unless you sail to Tunisia or some other country with low labour cost, you'll pay dearly for having it blasted, sanded or scraped off.

Uhm, 6 or 7 years later, we're still very happy with ours. It's now getting to the point where it needs the manufacturer prescribed mild abrading at the next haulout to expose some fresh copper. It's well suited to scrubbing in the water, as it's a hard coating. We only haul out every 2 years (or less) and scrub in the water in between. Therefore financially it made a lot of sense and has long since paid for itself.
 
We are at the stage of hoping coppercoat is worth it. Chiara has been back in the water 8 days. She has that silky feeling of bottom perfection at the moment, just like her co owner? we had a monster beat back from poole today, she absolutely smashed it. NE wind over tide, still silky smooth. We had it done in summer, outside, it seemed like the best idea. It looks right, feels good, ask me again in 5 years.
 
I had it on a club racer for about 5 years. I prepped the hull (nightmare), then had the CopperCoat professionally applied.

Pros:
- We were able to get a great finish on the bottom, and then keep it, as there was no painting over every year with more and more normal antifoul.
- It was a tough finish so it was easy to power wash off fouling without abrading or damaging the paint.

Cons:
- The actual antifouling function did not work well in our brackish river. To keep a clean bottom for racing we scrubbed every 3 weeks in summer.
- Not a problem with Coppercoat specifically, but if you have a cast iron keel the rust will come through and you’ll need to touch the paint up anyway.

Despite the antifouling side of it not working well for me, I’d consider having it again owing to the fact you don’t have to antifoul the boat every year and you can easily wash the fouling off.
 
Hmm. I have a cast iron hydraulic lift keel, and also beaching legs, so the keel will have some contact with the bottom when beached.

Maybe I could get the hull and rudders copper coated, and just have the keel anti-fouled every year.
 
Frogmogman said:
Hmm. I have a cast iron hydraulic lift keel, and also beaching legs, so the keel will have some contact with the bottom when beached.

Maybe I could get the hull and rudders copper coated, and just have the keel anti-fouled every year.
Click to expand...
I also had a cast iron swing keel. Contact with the bottom is not necessarily a huge problem with CopperCoat as it’s very tough, but if you get rust on your keel now (and everyone with a cast iron keel does), you’ll still get it. It’s pretty common to skip the iron keel and do the rest of the boat, and several people in our club at the time did it.
 
When you say that Saint Quay Portrieux is very tidal, what do you mean?

Yes, it has a huge range but I’ve never noticed much tide running through the pontoons unlike say Treguier where I can’t imagine anything attaching itself to hulls … including eroding anti-foul ??
 
Chiara’s slave said:
We are at the stage of hoping coppercoat is worth it. Chiara has been back in the water 8 days. She has that silky feeling of bottom perfection at the moment, just like her co owner? we had a monster beat back from poole today, she absolutely smashed it. NE wind over tide, still silky smooth. We had it done in summer, outside, it seemed like the best idea. It looks right, feels good, ask me again in 5 years.
Click to expand...
I was out today too in Swift - Bucklers Hard to Hamble. It was a smashing sail and I loved the wind over tide especially around stansore point. Had a massive smile on my face all morning (arrived back by noon!)
 
Frogmogman said:
Hmm. I have a cast iron hydraulic lift keel, and also beaching legs, so the keel will have some contact with the bottom when beached.

Maybe I could get the hull and rudders copper coated, and just have the keel anti-fouled every year.
Click to expand...
Lift keels are a problem and to do it properly you need to take it out, Coppercoat and then re-assemble. A club member did this last year on a Jeanneau. but inly a 32' and the keel needed work anyway on a 20 year old boat. Generally though lifting keels foul less because they are not exposed much to light. Viable strategy to do just hull and rudder(s).
 
We took our centreboard out for the guys, they hung it up from a trestle to do it. In our cae, the rudder lifts too, that is antifouled in white, it would look a bit silly coppercoated. We did the big antifoul strip last year, very likely all 20 years of it. It turned us, and anything we wore, blue, in spite of ppe. Then the antifoul we used seemed to have no effect at all, we grew a forest in a month, total rubbish on a performance boat. So off it came, 2 years my arse.
 
I can share the experience of what happened with Dreamfinder over a number of years. I remained involved with her for quite a few years until just before the pandemic, so I saw the copper coat for a few of those years.

It worked well.

We really didn't have to do much more than jet wash the copper coated areas at all. Of course we had the usual clean off of props and shafts etc but that was all.

So if we do buy another boat, we will fork out for copper coat without a doubt.
 
For those who might to learn more on topic much on the Britican utube site by Kim on Coppercoat . I’m sure they would answer questions as seem to be back in uk touring Pompey sites of interest.
 
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