My copper coat has failed again. Prime before antifoul yes/no?

Coppercoat does work. I have seen boats lifted and the hull is very clean. And that's with DIY application.
But like any other antifoul it might not work at every location.
 
When one says abraded, one has to remember that the abrading process has to be with a very fine medium. hence a scotchbrite pad. If one uses a coarse paper it leaves minute scars in the surface which is a key for future growth. Problems arise when some scum hardens to the hull such as the stern where the hull is not always submerged. One cannot remove it with jetwash & scotchbrite so is tempted to use something like 180 grit paper. That is no good. My boat has quite a shallow run aft & 3 ft of hull gets weed almost immediately. But the rest of the boat gets a 2 inch weed growth right underneath anyway, so it still has to be lifted & washed off. Only the keel, which has seajet, survives
 
Elessar said:
Then they should be helping you because presumably you gave them a lot of money.

It doesn’t work straight away. It takes 3 months to get to full strength. So the first year is always the worst.

If you launch when the water is warm, sometime slime can form before it corrodes. That’s a problem and you need a jet wash or diver scrub.
Some people sand it back every year. And have a year 1 every year. Nowhere in the instructions does it say to do that. You may need to do it after year 6 or 7.

Activation means taking the shine off with a scotchbrite pad. Not hard sanding. All you are doing is taking the shiny resin off the top of some copper particles so they are in contact with the water and can start to corrode.

What colour is it. Brown, black or green?
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I'm loving your help please keep it coming.
1 day travel to boat, 1 day prep, 1 day weather delay 2 day sail to boatyard, lift out delayed, boat on hard over weekend(4 days), 2 days sail back to home port. 1 day prep, 1 day travel home.

The boatyard agreed to pay for the lift and reactivation last year but I'm not wasting my vacation doing the same thing again this year when the growth is even worse. Just look at the videos!

Warm water? The boat is in southern Spain and was launched in Feb/March. Please advise where I can find some cooler water to launch into?

Activation: I can give you the boatyard contact details so you can let them know how to activate the product. I'm sure they will be grateful for your expertise.

It was dull copper when it went in, brown when lifted last year which turned light green once cleaned and out of the water. Dull copper when relaunched after activation and I'm unable to see the colour this year due to growth.
 
Buck Turgidson said:
I'm loving your help please keep it coming.
1 day travel to boat, 1 day prep, 1 day weather delay 2 day sail to boatyard, lift out delayed, boat on hard over weekend(4 days), 2 days sail back to home port. 1 day prep, 1 day travel home.

The boatyard agreed to pay for the lift and reactivation last year but I'm not wasting my vacation doing the same thing again this year when the growth is even worse. Just look at the videos!

Warm water? The boat is in southern Spain and was launched in Feb/March. Please advise where I can find some cooler water to launch into?

Activation: I can give you the boatyard contact details so you can let them know how to activate the product. I'm sure they will be grateful for your expertise.

It was dull copper when it went in, brown when lifted last year which turned light green once cleaned and out of the water. Dull copper when relaunched after activation and I'm unable to see the colour this year due to growth.
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Brown when lifted is bad. It hasn’t corroded. They don’t need my “expertise” they can call AMC who are super helpful.
 
Tradewinds said:
It seems very hit & miss. To answer the OP on my late son’s boat we abraded the CC with a sander and applied AF.
Job done.
Far, far better result all round compared to CC.

And yes, the CCwas applied ‘professionally’.
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Just because someone charged you for applying it is no guarantee they knew what they are doing. If there was a desire to antifoul over the top that is evident.
 
Elessar said:
Just because someone charged you for applying it is no guarantee they knew what they are doing. If there was a desire to antifoul over the top that is evident.
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No-one charged me. It is the ‘system’ we inherited when the boat was purchased. I have seen the invoice for the work (not SYH where I am based).
IMO CC is too hit and miss and I wouldn’t dream of having it applied to my yacht.
However, I would like to say that Suffolk Yacht Harbour seem to do an excellent spray application of CC, very pretty - I’ve no idea if the ones they do are more successful. Anyway, it’s a lot of money to gamble.
 
Elessar said:
Some people sand it back every year. And have a year 1 every year. Nowhere in the instructions does it say to do that. You may need to do it after year 6 or 7.
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When I launched at the first year I sailed to St Helier & had to lift for a Jet wash. It was done by Billy Hibbs the life boat coxswain at the time. He said that he did all the boats there & Copper Coat was clearly a failure.
I rang the manufacturer & told them of the problem. They asked if I had abraded the hull when applied & I said No. The chap said that was the mistake & I should do so EVERY YEAR. I said that it did not show that in the instructions that came with the product. He said that was a mistake but it did show it in the DVD that they sent me.( might have been the other way round I forget now)
After a couple of years of no improvement they sold me some more coppercoat at a discounted price & I applied another 4-5 coats, following their instructions given over the phone to the letter. Still no better.

The only advantage is that I launch at the start of the season & go for a trip to the CIs then on return I leave it for 4 weeks or so. By then it is unsailable (I normally end up having to motor home)so I get it scrubbed before a trip to Ostend & Dutch canals for 4-5 weeks, then lay up for winter. That way I get round its poor performance.

I do not bother to abrade now, except near the waterline ( and where travel lift hoist straps are)as weed gets to 8 inches long in no time & is difficult to scrub off. There is always a white scum line because the coppercoat goes well above the actual waterline when sat in port
 
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These coppercoat performance horror stories sound so much better than my experience with eroding a/f last year that I am now considering delaying launch so that I can apply the defective coppercoat you're all suffering.
 
Tradewinds said:
No-one charged me. It is the ‘system’ we inherited when the boat was purchased. I have seen the invoice for the work (not SYH where I am based).
IMO CC is too hit and miss and I wouldn’t dream of having it applied to my yacht.
However, I would like to say that Suffolk Yacht Harbour seem to do an excellent spray application of CC, very pretty - I’ve no idea if the ones they do are more successful. Anyway, it’s a lot of money to gamble.
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Last year a boat came in to Bradwell & the owner was complaining bitterly about Coppercoat applied by Shotley staff
 
justanothersailboat said:
These coppercoat performance horror stories sound so much better than my experience with eroding a/f last year that I am now considering delaying launch so that I can apply the defective coppercoat you're all suffering.
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That is pretty much what led us to apply it. Our fouling is no better or worse than the herd racing that we were using before. But we’d scrub through that in 6 months.
 
Nothing lasts more than a month where I am without scrubbing from the dinghy, even TBT only lasted about 6 weeks, so the big advantage of coppercoat is that I don't have to antifoul any more, save £300 per year in paint and labour; and it doesn't fall off when you scrub.

I'm also assuming it's less toxic to the local marine environment than an eroding anti fouling.
 
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boomerangben said:
Oh well, the blood sweat and tears I spent applying coppercoat last month might have been in vain. Only one way to find out…..
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I did my own and it's holding up beautifully - I hauled out last week after 2 summers and a winter in the water, with little use, and a soft brush was all it needed. Quite why it's such a failure for some seems to be a complete mystery.
 
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