She's not white anymore

[tgpg]

She\'s not white anymore

We bought our new (to us anyway) yacht this year and put her in the water with her gleaming white hull - problem is that the season is only 2 months old and the beautiful gleaming hull the previous owner had is now a dodgy shade of brown with growth around the water line. Apart from anitfoulilng higher up next season how can I restore the whiteness to the hull whilst she is in the water and, if anyone is feeling generous with answers, what should I have done pre launch to stop this discolouring above the water line.

Thanks for any help that anyone posts in reply

 

[incognito]

Re: She\'s not white anymore

Get in rubberdubby with oxalic acid and a cloth.

You could try baby's nappy-rash cream, Sudasomething, which I have heard can be quite effective!!

 

[claymore]

Re: She\'s not white anymore

Yes, go a bit higher with the boot top and get some Y10 on to get rid of the stains. A really good wax (3M) will help as well.

regards
Claymore

 

[WayneS]

Re: She\'s not white anymore

Starbright (Star Brite maybe but who knows) sell a water-line cleaner. I used it over the W/E and it worked wonders. For how long I do not know.

Wayne

 

[vyv_cox]

Re: She\'s not white anymore

That's what I would have thought, too. However, come launch time this year I had not finished my preparations, with the result that I had cleaned both sides, mostly using Black Streak Remover, but only polished one, with some sort of Teflon polish. In our berth we face south, so sunlight is just about equally distributed over both bows. After two months or so the polished side is quite yellow but the cleaned only side remains white. Interesting, or what?

Experience in cleaning is that oxalic acid, as contained in Teak Brite, is superb. Black Streak Remover is just about as good at removing the yellow but is also fantastic at removing the black streaks. Y10 is very temperature dependent, at the height of summer, when it staggers to over 20 degrees (!) Y10 works OK but in more normal conditions it either doesn't work at all or very slowly. I have a possibly unjustified concern that maybe oxalic acid could be having an adverse long-term effect so I have settled on the BSR, especially since my wife bought a couple of gallons of it at a knock-down rate.

The water line/boot top is very difficult to deal with. All harbours have diesel/oil/muck floating on the surface and this quickly stains the boat and then the stain attracts fouling. Scrubbing off the stain removes eroding antifouling so is not worth doing. Last year we put hard scrubbable on the top 30 cm or so and eroding on the rest. This worked fairly well in fresh water, where we are for most of the time. So this year we have put hard all over. I have scrubbed once already but at least the slime comes off easily. This begs the question as to whether it is worth putting anything on at all, so weak are the only legal products.

 

[tcm]

Re: black bottoms?

After loads of work keeping "matching"colour clean around the waterline, I fiound best to have black antifoul. Looks fairly awful out of the water, but in the water the entire underside of the boat "disappears" to the human eye.

 

[kgi]

Re: She\'s not white anymore

i had the same problem and i was advised to use toilet bowl cleaner (the ones that remove rust and scale) , i think, like you that the acids probably etch the gelcoat, because, yes the boat comes clean real quick, but the problem recurs real quick as well, leading me to believe that the surfaces may be etched, what do you think? cheers keith

 

[vyv_cox]

Re: She\'s not white anymore

Yes, that was my thought, too. I can't find any evidence that any weak organic acid will react with polyester resin but I have the nagging feeling that a return to yellow happens more quickly after Teak Brite treatment. One of the good things about BSR is that the active ingredient is EDTA, approved for food use, so presumably totally non-reactive.

 

[Langouste]

Re: She\'s not white anymore

Your profile does not say where you keep your boat. Mine is in Poole which has a particularly bad problem with dirty water lines due to the shallow warm water with a high algal content. The short answer in these circumstances is that there is no way to keep the waterline completely clean as even on antifouling, hard or eroding, the algy will build up as slime. You will have to do what I do which is get into your rubber duck and scrub around once a month!

NB sailing regularly also helps get rid of slime.

 

[toad]

Re: Interesting or what

The only part of the waterline that has not gone yellow is the bit i did not polish

 

[LadyInBed]

Re: Not worth it

I also keep the boat on a river, summer and winter, and havn't A/Fed for two years now. I use Boot Top 6" above and a foot below the waterline and beach the boat Aug/Sept to brush off the slime.

 

[Smiffy]

Re: She\'s not white anymore

I read somewhere that if the weather is warm enough 18C + a wipe over with a lemon does the trick although it doesn't last very long. Cheap though. Easiest thing is just put up with it!

 

[tgpg]

Re: She\'s not white anymore

Thanks for all the help - I think as soon as the weather is anything like good I will get in the dinghy and rub her down with a selection of what is recommended and see what happens or I will do it when we put her ashore at the end of September, whichever comes first. (that will be September then!)

She is in the Clyde for information and I suppose I shall just have to ride out the embarassment of having a mucky boat which has been in beautiful condition with the previous owner over many years - it is only cosmetic I suppose!

Do appreciate the help though - one day I will actually be able to respond to these requests for help rather than always have to ask

 

[Guest]

Re: She\'s not white anymore

I too suffer from the ' yellow plague' . This year I gave my hull two goes of the top of the range teflon wax. If anything, the yellow has come on quicker this year than others ???????

On the next mooring to me is a year old Parker 33.5 with a white hull. It has been in the water the same time as me and you cannot see a trace of yellow. I am sure ' newness' must have a big effect in keeping the 'plague' away. In my kneck of the woods ( East Coast) I would probably have to use removers every fortnight.

Will give BSR a go though and see what happens. Does it also work on all those black tyre marks you get in marinas ?