Mud, Silt and Antifouling

[stephennoble]

Today i was sitting on my mooring on the river Frome in Dorset doing some general maintenance. The breeze was blowing me close to the bank and as the tide ebbed we sank into the mud. We have a soft self eroding antifoul and I wondered what effect sinking into the mud/silt and ozzzzzzing out again on the flood had on the antifouling? I could imagine to being rubbed off just as you can by gently rubbing your hand on it.

 

[AntarcticPilot]

Today i was sitting on my mooring on the river Frome in Dorset doing some general maintenance. The breeze was blowing me close to the bank and as the tide ebbed we sank into the mud. We have a soft self eroding antifoul and I wondered what effect sinking into the mud/silt and ozzzzzzing out again on the flood had on the antifouling? I could imagine to being rubbed off just as you can by gently rubbing your hand on it.

Well, besides the eroding effect, there's also the issue that mud etc. will stick to your antifouling and provide a substrate on which fouling organisms can establish themselves. That will make your antifouling ineffective, according to other posts on here. Received wisdom seems to be that nothing really works if you're in a mud berth. No-one has mentioned increased rates of erosion of antifouling in such circumstances, but it does seem reasonable that it wouldn't increase the life of the paint.

No personal experience - I sail in the clear(ish) waters of the Clyde!

 

[LONG_KEELER]

Today i was sitting on my mooring on the river Frome in Dorset doing some general maintenance. The breeze was blowing me close to the bank and as the tide ebbed we sank into the mud. We have a soft self eroding antifoul and I wondered what effect sinking into the mud/silt and ozzzzzzing out again on the flood had on the antifouling? I could imagine to being rubbed off just as you can by gently rubbing your hand on it.

I am still waiting for the genius to invent the "Antifouling Bag".

Against the tide, this bag (available in different lengths) slides over the boat end and you easily walk forward and the bag encompasses the boat . If required, a device plugging into the cigar lighter will pump out unwanted
water.

I envisage a strong tarp material, similar to builders merchants gravel bags.

These tarp bags already exist for outboards in wells.

Cannot understand why KTL Industries have not already invented one yet .

 

[Ian_Edwards]

Hi, I kept two boats on drying moorings in Stonehaven Harbour, for a total of about 20 years. For the last 13 of those I used International Micro Optima, a water based, soft, self eroding antifouling.
The boats were in the water April until October. The Micro Optima worked well, I had no problems with fouling, or errosion but the mud discolored the antifouling very quickly to a fetching shade of brown.

Every winter I spend several not so happy hours rubbing off the mud stains with wet and dry (used wet) before applying new antifouling. I've no idea if that was necessary, but didn't want to take the risk of the antifouling peeling (it's expensive stuff).

I now use CopperCoat and have a deepwater swinging mooring on the West Coast of Scotland (still April to October) and find that the CopperCoat is not as good as the Optima, I regularly get a crop of barnacles, but at least I don't have to rub it down and reapply every year.