Have just spent ages cleaning layers of old antiifoul and primer off the prop of my Beany 285. Big ships leave their propellors unpainted, why don't we /forums/images/graemlins/confused.gif? Any advice?
Have you tried white teflon grease? I've put it on this season and will let you know how it goes. On the few times I have used AF on the propeller, the barnacles and weeds grew as readily as ever. Last year I used normal underwater grease, and it worked quite well.
Has to be professionally applied (here in NZ anyway) but does fantastic job - miles more effective than antifouling. All the big motor yachts use it on their props.
I polish the prop each year and get just as much (little?) growth as I used to get when I antifouled it. There used to be lots of advocates for anhydrous lanolin, which is painted on then smoothed by heating with a hot air gun, but I've never ben convinced.
I use the old ZEBO fire grate polish on mine re-applied every year, and worked well in, a tip I got from my old engineering instructor years ago. Believe me nothing ever grows on that prop.
I did the polish/lanolin/hot air gun routine last year, and it worked OK. It was probably a little better than the best year I had using antifoul, but pretty comparable. But I have had some awful results using hard antifoul over the years, though, so I'm going to stick with the lanolin. I got mine from Classic Marine.