The price of antifouling

[capnsensible]

After a decent passage our Coppercoat is clean as a whistle. However we left the boat for some weeks in the lagoon in Sint Maarten and we had to pay a diver to scrub the bottom!

That makes me feel better. After around a month there on one visit, we had to get a diver too. That's with regular antifouling. The propellor was a furrball....

 

[Chiara’s slave]

That makes me feel better. After around a month there on one visit, we had to get a diver too. That's with regular antifouling. The propellor was a furrball....

Seems to be the way of things. Most AFs are ok when you move regularly, some last longer than others. Coppercoat lasts the best by a factor of 5 as an absolute minimum.

 

[john_morris_uk]

That makes me feel better. After around a month there on one visit, we had to get a diver too. That's with regular antifouling. The propellor was a furrball....

There are a lot of liveaboards in the lagoon and let’s just say, ‘there’s a lot of nutrients in the water’…

 

[Snowgoose-1]

After a decent passage our Coppercoat is clean as a whistle. However we left the boat for some weeks in the lagoon in Sint Maarten and we had to pay a diver to scrub the bottom!

That's interesting.

There was a powerboat a few berths down from me. He couldn't get the boat onto the plane. An engineer came down and checked all the mechanicals but everything seemed fine. The prop was clean tilted out of the water.

He noticed that the waterline showed slime, despite the fact that hard antifouling had been applied only a couple of months earlier. They went out on the river for some miles at speed with the intention of clearing any slime. The boat would still not plane.

The boat was held in the slings. There was only slime, which was hosed off. The boat was tested and climbed onto the plane easily.

I have also found on displacement yachts that slime remains despite a lively sail . I remove mine mechanically with a Scrubbis. Admittedly , this is in the Uk and not the Caribbean where slime may well be a different kind of species .

 

[john_morris_uk]

That's interesting.

There was a powerboat a few berths down from me. He couldn't get the boat onto the plane. An engineer came down and checked all the mechanicals but everything seemed fine. The prop was clean tilted out of the water.

He noticed that the waterline showed slime, despite the fact that hard antifouling had been applied only a couple of months earlier. They went out on the river for some miles at speed with the intention of clearing any slime. The boat would still not plane.

The boat was held in the slings. There was only slime, which was hosed off. The boat was tested and climbed onto the plane easily.

I have also found on displacement yachts that slime remains despite a lively sail . I remove mine mechanically with a Scrubbis. Admittedly , this is in the Uk and not the Caribbean where slime may well be a different kind of species .

The only direct experience I can cite is that after leaving the boat in Gran Canaria for a month, we returned to find a moderately healthy amount of slime and some weed.

Seventeen and a half days of fast downwind sailing across the Atlantic and she was as clean as though she’d just been power washed.

 

[Chiara’s slave]

The only direct experience I can cite is that after leaving the boat in Gran Canaria for a month, we returned to find a moderately healthy amount of slime and some weed.

Seventeen and a half days of fast downwind sailing across the Atlantic and she was as clean as though she’d just been power washed.

We scrub because we don’t have 17 days to get clean in. It takes less than a week to get sufficient slime to destroy our chances, racing. At that stage, a wipe over, taking half an hour (bearing in mind we have 3 hulls to clean) gets us back to our top speed. Any other antifoul would of course be reduced by this. Even hard racing comes off bit by bit. We use conventional antifoul on our XOD, that lasts the 6 months of the race season, and we are back to primer.

 

[Stemar]

My antifoul got covered in a thin film of silt, after which I don't think it would have mattered what it was.

That's the problem I have on a drying mooring in Portsmouth Harbour. The mud sticks to the Gromore antifoul, and everything else sticks to the mud, I put a hard AF on last year, and it wasn't noticeably worse than any of the eroding stuff I've tried, so I'll see how it does in the second year of its alleged effective life. Fortunately, Hardway has a scrubbing grid and pressure washers, so a mid-season scrub isn't difficult or expensive.

 

[justanothersailboat]

Gromore :-D that's the stuff, alas! thanks for sharing that experience, I am thinking of doing something different but not sure what yet, this is interesting to hear.

 

[Stemar]

Provided you have access to an easy scrub, I reckon that that's not only the most effective way to keep a clean bottom, but it's also greener than paint that falls off and goes into the sea, and doesn't work anyway, at least in high fouling areas. I had a friend who kept his boat in Chichester Marina and, for him, Coppercoat worked well. In spite of not going out very often, his boat only needed an annual scrub to be cruising clean. If he raced regularly, he might have wanted to do it more often

 

[Lucky Duck]

Provided you have access to an easy scrub, I reckon that that's not only the most effective way to keep a clean bottom, but it's also greener than paint that falls off and goes into the sea, and doesn't work anyway, at least in high fouling areas. I had a friend who kept his boat in Chichester Marina and, for him, Coppercoat worked well. In spite of not going out very often, his boat only needed an annual scrub to be cruising clean. If he raced regularly, he might have wanted to do it more often

I’m intrigued that the reported performance on these forums seems to vary so much so going down that route seems a relatively expensive gamble.

By way of another example the boat two down from mine had the old ablative paint blasted off and copercoat applied in the ‘tent’ at Deacons. It needs three visits to the Sealift around March, July and September each year and is usually looking pretty sorry for itself prior to those lifts. No doubt it is super fast immediately afterwards.

 

[Chiara’s slave]

I’m intrigued that the reported performance on these forums seems to vary so much so going down that route seems a relatively expensive gamble.

By way of another example the boat two down from mine had the old ablative paint blasted off and copercoat applied in the ‘tent’ at Deacons. It needs three visits to the Sealift around March, July and September each year and is usually looking pretty sorry for itself prior to those lifts. No doubt it is super fast immediately afterwards.

The main point of coppercoat is that it lasts at least 10 years. Most of which time it’s no worse than conventional AF.

 

[Stemar]

On Jissel, I gave up, and didn't bother. Scrubbing three times a season kept us going at a reasonable speed - for a Snapdragon

 

[Groucho]

Did you antifoul your prop in the UK? It's not something I've ever felt I need to do: I just clean up and grease the prop whenever I lift out to change anodes but I recognise things are different in the caribbean

Given all the folks saying their antifoul doesn't work I think I should feel lucky. I've had decent performance from the various generations of International Micron over the past 15 years and despite increasing environment friendliness haven't seen that drop off. My last lot of Micron 350 did decent service for 3 years in the water

I, too, used International Micron 350 last season and it worked well. But, in answer to the earlier question, not antifouling the prop was NOT so successful on the East Coast of the UK. I have a hilarious photo of the large fuzzball, but too big a file to share, sadly