Nice clean bottom and prop

[Robin]

Lifted out this morning and just had a touch of slime on our Micron which is white and it shows, yard pressure washer man said it was the easiest he'd done this year. The prop too was fine, one or two barnacles only by the blade roots, I cleaned it off whilst the boat was still in the lift and the prop still wet with an old bit of plastic sail batten. The prop was polished (like BRIGHT mirror polished, not wire brushed), no antifoul, no lanolin nothing but Brasso and elbow grease. I think if we had a fast sail the hull would have cleaned itself, but the boat hasn't left her berth since early November.

 

[dom]

My Micron has done well this year too. Last year and the year before it picked up quite a lot of slime by September particularly around the waterline. Boat only launched in May. Funny how much it's performance changes from year to year.

 

[Sans Bateau]

It is recognised as having been a bad season (last summer) for fouling, so your results are even more impressive.

Maybe (asking the impossible here, I know) we could have a 'Fouling prediction chart', just like a tidal prediction chart, but one that tells us which antifouling will work best and where in the coming season.

Any volunteers want to work on that?

 

[Davydine]

Robin, was it just elbow grease on the prop or did you use a very fine wet and dry paper first to get things going?

 

[dom]

Strange thing is the antifouling did a much better job this year compared to the last two. I had better check that it is Micron before continuing with this point and finding out that I am taliking nonsense! Boat is in Portsmouth.

 

[Sailfree]

Last year for the first time I let Seaventures antifoul my boat as they had warantee work to do and had messed me about and offered to do it with labour free.

Unfortunately found that they had just slapped it on after one pressure wash - no rubbing down or preparation work.

Imagine my surprise and glee when it came out relatively clean and more importantly intact and no areas peeling.

Full marks to Micron Extra Antifoul but will I put as much work into preparing the old antifoul in future when I am back to doing it myself?

 

[Georgio]

Will be following this closely, I am also based in Portsmouth Hbr and used Micron Ultima (the two-pot antifoul) and it worked ok-ish. I still have to wipe off slime every two weeks for racing but this would also wash itself to some extent while moving. The colour was dove white.

I'm thinking of using Micron Extra (it's slightly cheaper than the ultima) in white this year.

 

[Robin]

We used to use Micron OPTIMA, the waterbased 2-Pack also in white and found it excellent, but we had a bad batch that blistered off the coat (also Optima) below) and had to take the whole lot off. After that we had limited time and switched to solvent based Micron also in white because it was more tolerant of application conditions. In practice Micron was nowhere near as slime proof as Optima but was for us £140 cheaper, so even if we needed a diver clean mid season we were still saving loads of money! In 2005 we had 2 diver cleans of the Micron although only one was really needed and in 2006 we had just a quick wipe over and a really fast sail would probably have done the job just as well, but we like to start our main cruise with a clean fast bottom!

 

[Robin]

[ QUOTE ]
Robin, was it just elbow grease on the prop or did you use a very fine wet and dry paper first to get things going?

[/ QUOTE ]

Wet and dry starting about 400 grit then down to 1000 before finishing off with Brasso. The first time is the worst after which sometimes only 1000 is needed plus the Brasso. What isn't good enough IMO is wirebrushing or power sanding, all it does is give a bright look covered in scratches, just right to give a good key for the crap to stick to. I usually give a final polish and buff on launch day too just to take off last minute tarnishing.

 

[Robin]

[ QUOTE ]
Full marks to Micron Extra Antifoul but will I put as much work into preparing the old antifoul in future when I am back to doing it myself?


[/ QUOTE ]

I have put SWMBO on standby to rub ours down tomorrow..... /forums/images/graemlins/cool.gif

 

[Robin]

[ QUOTE ]
My Micron has done well this year too. Last year and the year before it picked up quite a lot of slime by September particularly around the waterline. Boat only launched in May. Funny how much it's performance changes from year to year.

[/ QUOTE ]

We used Micron for many years on our last boat and then had some that didn't work at all. International replaced it FOC with Optima which we used for many years too until we had a bad batch of that (see reply below). I would have carried on with Optima but used Micron CSC because we couldn't guarantee a dry 24hrs after each coat in the short time left and Micron is more forgiving and so much cheaper as well that we could have a diver clean if needed and still save lots. The diver clean is really me being picky, although slime does slow us down and anyway looks bad on a white bottom and we like to do our main cruise clean and fast.