Recommendation for Copper Coat yard in south east

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haydude

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Hello,

I am looking for a recommendation regarding a boat yard that does Coppercoat at reasonable prices. I am in the South East (although one day sail far from the solent).

I was quoted around £2,700 to Coppercoat an 11m sailing yacht:

1) blast the hull to gelcoat to remove soft antifoul
2) coat with Coppercoat
3) cost of Coppercoat.

Lift and relaunch excluded from the above price.

I phoned Coppercoat who suggested the above job could be done for £1,500, with £600 worth of Coppercoat materials.
 
Before you shell out your hard earned money I recommend you talk to any yard manager that does a lot of hull scrubs in a season and doesn’t make money out of coppercoating. He should give you a fairly unbiased independent opinion of whether its worth the money or not. Try Gosport Boatyard for instance; ask them what they think about the effectiveness of coppercoat compared to ordinary antifoul.
You can do a quick eyeball test, just walk along the pontoons at any Marina such as Haslar where a lot of boats have been done and compare the weed growth on boats that have been coppercoated compared with those that haven’t.
For me the coppercoat was a waste of money, its just doesn’t work and don’t tell me I should have abraded it, that’s been done several times, I get weed growth within weeks of scrubbing off.

If you have the hull blasted you will have to epoxy it before coppercoat to fill the voids created, that’s an additional cost you may not have factored in.

I also cannot recommend Symblast, they did my boat and the coppercoat is blistering and when I mentioned it on here before Paul replied in a PM and asked for more details, when I gave them to him he never got back to me. I also suspect, but cannot prove that they used too weak a copper mix, he gave me some resin and copper to mix up myself and coat where the props were to be moved, those areas are now a much more 'coppery' colour than the rest of the hull that his guys coated.

I've written the expense off as a bad job and just scrub off three or four times each summer.
 
Symblast did a good job for me earlier this year with the blast off and associated sanding. However, Paul (Symblast) wanted to increase the estimated price significantly (by nearly £1000) to fill the voids that were exposed in the gelcoat before the planned 3 coats of Coppercoat. I was unhappy about the price increase and sought a second opinion.
The new contractor filled the voids with epoxy paste in less than half a day (@ £30 per hour) and went on to finish the job with 5 coats of Gelshield; I abandoned the idea of Coppercoat when the price went up.
One point to note if you get the boat blasted - it makes a terrible mess; antifouling dust and sand everywhere. Although Symblast removed the worst of the mess with a high pressure wash, there were several patches of 'trodden in' blue on the teak deck etc. and I am still getting debris from under the hatch garage 6 months later!
 
Playtime said:
Symblast did a good job for me earlier this year with the blast off and associated sanding. However, Paul (Symblast) wanted to increase the estimated price significantly (by nearly £1000) to fill the voids that were exposed in the gelcoat before the planned 3 coats of Coppercoat. I was unhappy about the price increase and sought a second opinion.
The new contractor filled the voids with epoxy paste in less than half a day (@ £30 per hour) and went on to finish the job with 5 coats of Gelshield; I abandoned the idea of Coppercoat when the price went up.
One point to note if you get the boat blasted - it makes a terrible mess; antifouling dust and sand everywhere. Although Symblast removed the worst of the mess with a high pressure wash, there were several patches of 'trodden in' blue on the teak deck etc. and I am still getting debris from under the hatch garage 6 months later!
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Roger, be fair mate we said an extra £600-800 and there were a lot of pin holes, we also have a lot further to travel than John did and of course i had to add this, we also told you quite clearly that it was 4 coats of copper coat we would NEVER do 3. We also cleaned your boat very thoroughly and had you not been fully happy then you are quite capable of using your phone and calling me-we would have then returned and dealt with any problem you had.
 
Coppercoat at Port Solent

I Installed coppercoat to our 38ft westerly 4 years ago. For the first 3 seasons it was kept at Ocean Village and jet washed once a year at Sealift in Cowes.

This season past where we moved the boat to Port Solent at the beginning of the season the growth after 3-4 weeks after the jet wash was amazing.

Does anyone have any information about weed growth in Port Solent? Will lifting the boat, jet washing it and sanding down do anything?

All comments greatfully recieved!

Regards

Alex
 
Try http://www.arccompany.co.uk/ based at Drivers Wharf on the Itchen, they will lift your boat, slurry blast it with their Farrow System machine then epoxy it and coppercoat it for you. The overall prices I have been quoted seem competitive.

They blasted my boat this week and did a very thorough job;- it took loads longer and much more in the way of materials than they had estimated and they had to move to a much heavier aggresive blasting media to cut through some previously applied epoxy back to the bulletproof 40 year old gel coat to open up the blisters that had appeared. But they stood by their quoted price which pleased me, as many wouldn't in the same circumstance.

Plan is to regularly wash the bottom over the winter and hopefully dry it out, then apply epoxy filler to the holes, four coats of epoxy followed by four of Coppercoat.

Dunno if the Coppercoat will work as there are conflicting opinions wherever you look - but having done the epoxy job it's not a lot more trouble to give it a go, and if it does work then a couple of scrubs a year followed by a quick burnish has got to be better than muckin about with antifoul..
 
Symblast took care of the old A/F on my Sea Ray Sundancer 400, then another contractor, can not remember his name, applied 4 coats of epoxy (gelshield?) and while the last coat was still not set, 4 or 5 coats of Coppercoat. Total cost I recall being about £2300 with the job being done at Ichen Marina.

I am very happy with the results so far, has been out twice and very quick to jet wash and relaunch.

Graham
 
Recommendation for Coppercoat in South East

My experience matches that of Bluechip. My Coppercoat was applied from new, but it has never been as effective as the standard self eroding anti-foul that I used on my previous boat, despite sanding each winter. The only good thing you can say is that, because it is an epoxy base, it forms a nice hard surface and I have not had to apply paint for the past 3 winters. Occasionally I toy with the idea of getting another coat of copper put on, but since I am due to retire soon and my boat is a bilge keeler, I think I will probably just put up with scrubbing it off approx 3 times each season.

If I do re-coat, presumably I would not have to have the old stuff removed? Can anyone confirm this?
 
SolentBoy said:
If however, you are interested in other options, I have been using Blue and Green Marine's ultrasonic system this year and have been very pleased with the results.
Click to expand...

I have been looking at the options and are quite interested in how much this kind of system costs. I guess the big factor on price is the size of the boat and how many transducers you need.

Would you mind sharing how much your system cost and the size of your boat?

Cheers
Paul
 
Slipperman said:
My experience matches that of Bluechip. My Coppercoat was applied from new, but it has never been as effective as the standard self eroding anti-foul that I used on my previous boat, despite sanding each winter.
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++

And I don't think it can ever be so. After all, conventional antifoul includes both copper powder and biocides so if coppercoat were as effective, the biocides would be unnecessary.

I've copper coated my boat with the idea that it is kept in a low fouling area and since I had to blast anyway to clean off accumulated antifoul, I might as well try the coppercoat.

If it works well enough for my area - OK. If it doesnt, then not a lot lost and I can always overcoat with conventional.
 
I can recommend Symblast to remove the old antifoul. They did an excellent job on my boat and left absolutely no mess. As for putting on the copper coat - do it yourself. Just pick a warm day and with the help of a couple of friends you'll have it done.

For me coppercoat has been excellent.
 
is it worth the money?

I have seen a few boats with copper coat on them. it has improved with time. I have never been impressed with it to be honest.
It costs a bomb to apply and it does need attention.
I saw a guy sanding his this spring done, it was 3 years old and he was going through in places, when I saw the same boat at lift out it was slimey, weedy and barnacles had set, after 5 months afloat, it dries between tides.

It looked an awful job sanding it back to expose fresh copper too, which is part of the principle of copper and oxidisation, I guess.

Im no expert, but I think it is a big waste of money based on the half dozen boats I have seen over the years with it. a good antifouling is the way forward, in MY view.

I know people have other ideas.

it seems the cost of the application equates to about 8 years of paint, roughly, and you do have tojet wash it in autumn, and sand it in spring.

Just afew humble observations, I guess.

Be good to know you experience, though.
 
Did mine two seasons ago

Had mine done professionally two seasons ago, first season OK but not great but on lifting it was quite clear why... The copper had not been properly exposed. After re-abrading and re-launching the boat was in the water for six months and had a jet off and there was nothing except slime.

This year plan not to take the boat out this winter just lift and jet off in the spring so the jury is still out for me. Whilst I don't get any real weed growth, I do get a coating of slime but I have no idea if the slime I get is better or worse than with a conventional anti-foul. I used to have a mid season scrub-wash with my previous boat which was not Copperpcoated so the only difference to me is what happens between scrubs.

Quite honestly, if I was starting again I probably wouldn't bother. With anti-foul you can swap brands each year and moan about the changing conditions rending last years winner ineffective or moan about the fact that this years stuff is not the same and the manufacturer has sneakily changed the formulation. I am convinced that anything that is any good is not for sale and if it was any good they would ban it.

PS Didn't Dick Durham use a different brand this season(i.e. not Coppercoat) and it was a disaster for him?
 
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