Scrub downs illegal.

[Twister_Ken]

Politesse, my dear. We call her Mrs Richard. First name Fanny.

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[Gunfleet]

I know who caused this. Abt a year ago on the Rance my son and I watched a Belgian dry his bilge keeler out, then take every strip of clothing off, climb over the side and start to scrub it with a long brush. It was one of the most gruesome performances I've ever seen and the French have obviously rushed through a law to prevent a repeat.

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[mpprh]

Hi

Oops ! Last week I spent 2 hrs with flippers mask & snorkel doing the mid season hull scrub. I was at Sausset les Pins .......... Is that OK ? And does anyone care !

I have to say each brush stroke resulted in an opaque cloud of "mousse". The French describe soft algae as mousse and the longer hanging stuff as salad.

The boat was antifouled in December, and stays in the water 12 months each year.

An interesting couple of questions :

I lived in Sweden until 1999. Sale of antifouling was going to be banned summer 1999. I sold my boat with enough AF for a further 3 yrs. People talked of underwater car washes etc. as a solution. Does anyone know what happened in Sweden ?

There are boats moored in Etang de Thau .............. a major oyster and mussel farming area. Do they have rules for antifouling ?

Peter
The Languedoc Page
http://tlp.netfirms.com







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[Mirelle]

I\'ve done some homework on this....

and my conclusion is that local authorities across Europe, most definitely including Britain, are woefully ignorant of the actual legal position, which, to put it in a nutshell, is that there is one international convention, made in 2001, which, with effect from the first of January this year, bans the application of TBT, and prohibits the presence of TBT on the hull of any vessel by 1/1/2008.

The Convention does contain a specific requirement that shipyards removing TBT based antifoulings shall take effective measures to prevent them entering the sea.

That is it. Everything else is excess of zeal by local planning bureaucrats, who are utterly paranoid about this.

Here is a summary of the Convention, on the IMO website:

http://www.imo.org/Conventions/mainframe.asp?topic_id=529

from which you will note that the relevant section is Annex 1, and, incidentally, that the Convention is not yet in force, because 25 nations need to ratify it and just three have done so.

Now, by COMMISSION DIRECTIVE 2002/62/EC the EU has accepted the IMO ban on the sale of organostannic compounds in antifoulings (wonderful how the EU has to invent the word "organostannic"!)

and here is what the UK Government has to say on the subject:

http://www.defra.gov.uk/environment/chemicals/hormone/

Er, that's it, folks!

This has by no means prevented local authorities the length and breadth of Europe, most certainly including my own local council, from sticking their oar in with vague references to "international legislation" and trying to, inter alia, ban scrubbing off, prohibit the dredging of mud berths (that's my very own Suffolk Coastal District Council) and generally carring on in a manner calculated to appease any environmental lobby that they imagine may be scrutinising them at the expense of reality.

To summarise, you may not scrub off antifoulings containing TBT. Since you have not (legally at any rate) applied such antifoulings since 1987, you are most unlikely to do so. You may scrub off antifoulings containing other products.

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[ccscott49]

Re: I\'ve done some homework on this....

I'm still not sure, whether the regulation in Holland has anything to do with this regulation, as it came into force (the ban on antifouling effluent) long before 2001, it was in force in 1997, for sure. I helped the yard I was in, build the washdown area and catchment tank.

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[Mirelle]

Re: I\'ve done some homework on this....

Yes, that, I fancy, is a local law. Holland is, in marine terms, very "green" - and perhaps understandably so, for two good reasons - Amsterdam is the European HQ for Greenpeace, which is campaigning strongly against wicked shipowners, who sell their nasty old ships for scrap in India and Pakistan, thereby generating employment, and Holland has a lot of inland water which is more affected by pollutants. There is a positive side - the port of Rotterdam originated the Green Award scheme, initially for tankers, now for all ships, in which ships which are proven to be environmetally virtuous get a worthwhile reduction in port dues (UK Govt please copy!) - this is a very rigourously policed scheme, with a genuine carrot, which does work, far better than endless waffle from less enlightened politicians in other European nations.

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[Sybarite]

Re: I\'ve done some homework on this....

Thanks for this bit of research. I had carried out a web search too and came to the same conclusion. I just thought that I had missed something and kept looking for more.

I also read some independent research which basically concluded that the jury was still out in terms of the detrimental effect and that the impact varied greatly depending on the local tidal flows.

John

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[Mirelle]

That\'s two of us, anyway

I am going to give her a scrub this weekend, anyway!

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