Which antifouling for boat moored at Littlehampton?

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Elbows

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Hello All,

I've recently bought a boat which I'll be mooring at Littlehampton and I'm about to antifoul it prior to launching in a few weeks. Can anybody recommend a brand which will work there? I've read that the effectiveness of different paints varies enormously depending on location. Old Westerly bilge keeler on half-tide mooring on hard standing with strong current. Thanks.
 
Greetings Mr Elbows :)
By the time of your post all the old farts on here will have been in their bunks sending up Z'ds ( including me :) ) and the younger sprogs amongst them will have been waiting for santa to arrive :)
Give it time & you will be overwhelmed with replies. Or you could just do a search for ''antifoul'' and start reading.
 
Well I'm based on a drying mooring in not so far away Chichester harbour.

I've always found Cruiser ( and occasionally Micron ) worked as well as or better than most - our club lifts out all the cruisers over a few days every autumn so we all compare each other's results.

This last season however was a disaster for me, and it seems everyone else on the South Coast who used Cruiser - while people who used el cheapo brands got much better results, my boat looked like a marine garden.

I still don't know if it was last season's conditions, or if they've further weakened Cruiser - I suspect a combination of both; one thing's for sure, I won't be using Cruiser in 2017 - will probably go for Seajet, no relation...
 
Elbows said:
Hello All,

I've recently bought a boat which I'll be mooring at Littlehampton and I'm about to antifoul it prior to launching in a few weeks. Can anybody recommend a brand which will work there? I've read that the effectiveness of different paints varies enormously depending on location. Old Westerly bilge keeler on half-tide mooring on hard standing with strong current. Thanks.
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The best advice you can be given is ask other people mooring in the same area which they find to be most effective.
 
Disaster too with Cruiser Walton Backwaters this year, whilst previous years been OK. Owner of a Bawley nearby used Seajet 33 with much better results (Andy you'd have to try it surely...)
 
An elderly bilge keeler means you won't be racing. So why antifoul? Launch clean in the spring, Dry out once in early summer and scrub off. Scrub again on haul out. Cheaper, quicker, safer, less damage to the environment. And the antifoulings we are now allowed to use seem to be far less effective than those now banned. I have not antifouled my bilge keeler for the last 20 years and don't plan on ever doing it in the future.
 
Hmmm, last season I helped a friend dry out his triple keeler - which was properly antifouled in Spring but had built up a thick layer of slime by August, and we were planning to travel the length of the Solent for the first time in that boat.

I'm not sure what it's like at Littlehampton for this, but we were lucky being able to dry on the gravel beach at Itchenor, so didn't need to book and pay for the scrubbing piles; it's still a bit of hassle, and the main thing is if one's days off are limited to weekends there may well be a queue if one needs a drying grid or piles - if the weather is bad, ie a strong onshore wind, that day or weekend's exercise would be the only thing getting scrubbed.

I think you'd need several scrubs a season if doing without antifouling completely.
 
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I'm no chemist or bio-botanist whatever, just moderate engineering quals - but I seriously doubt the validity of tests with strips of rival paints next to each other separated by a couple of inches; surely any current or tide to and fro will cross-contaminate the strips and render the results useless ?

In Langstone Harbour the Admiralty used to have 3 steel rafts with hollow centres into which were lowered steel plates, each with a different paint on, to work out which fared best; - they were known as The Admiralty Paint Stagings.

That was when the MOD could be bothered trying paints - and I suspect the raft plates were susceptible to cross contamination too; the Admiralty quite wisely ditched that research leaving it to industry and commerce to sort out, last I heard the remaining ' paint staging raft ' was run by the Portsmouth Uni' Marine Metallurgy Dept.
 
Thanks for all the replies, plenty of food for thought there. I'm hoping to get along to Littlehampton to talk to other boat owners but I've been so busy working on the boat that I haven't had a chance yet.

I was originally thinking of going with Coppercoat or similar as I've had to have the hull sandblasted anyway, but the guy who did the sandblasting recommended against it as there's a fair number of wet blisters (which I'm grinding out, drying, and filling) which indicates high moisture levels in the hull. I phoned Reactive Resins to enquire about their Synergy equivalent and they also said it's not a good idea unless moisture level in the hull is low as there could be a problem with adhesion.

It's very tempting to try going without any antifouling for the reasons given, but seeing how much growth and barnacles the hull collected during the 2 months between the survey jetwash in August and lifting the boat out in October I'm rather dubious about this course of (in)action.

I am still wondering whether it's worth taking a gamble on the Coppercoat sticking as it wouldn't be hugely expensive if I apply it myself, and it seems a shame not to take advantage of that nice clean sandblasted surface. Don't want to end up with flaking Coppercoat that is only stuck on in places though. Decisions, decisions.
 
In your situation I'd definitely go for Gelshield - but watch the temperatures, may be a good while before you can apply it.

Coppercoat seems like a big waste of money in your instance, but of course that's just my opinion.
 
The sandblaster said that epoxy painting would be a waste of money too because of the hull moisture, which was why I was leaning towards just a coat of primer and conventional antifouling. Would there be any advantage to applying Gelshield to a wet hull? It's a 43 year old Westerly and I fully accept that the osmosis is just a fact of life, and it's part of the reason the boat was cheap enough for me to afford. The low value of the boat means a full gelcoat strip and dry isn't a realistic proposition even if I could afford it, so whatever I put on has to cope with the high moisture level.
 
I don't see that a build up of slime is much of a problem - it's the barnacles and weed that really slow you down but as I said before one scrub off in mid season works for me. As a bilge keeler I don't need scrubbing piles but - be warned - the scrubbing off process can sometimes take as much as half an hour to complete.
 
Elbows said:
The sandblaster said that epoxy painting would be a waste of money too because of the hull moisture, which was why I was leaning towards just a coat of primer and conventional antifouling. Would there be any advantage to applying Gelshield to a wet hull? It's a 43 year old Westerly and I fully accept that the osmosis is just a fact of life, and it's part of the reason the boat was cheap enough for me to afford. The low value of the boat means a full gelcoat strip and dry isn't a realistic proposition even if I could afford it, so whatever I put on has to cope with the high moisture level.
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I don't think there is any half-way compromise.

You either thoroughly dry the hull, Gelshield and Coppercoat or you make good any blistering, prime, antifoul and go sailing.
 
richardabeattie said:
I don't see that a build up of slime is much of a problem - it's the barnacles and weed that really slow you down but as I said before one scrub off in mid season works for me. As a bilge keeler I don't need scrubbing piles but - be warned - the scrubbing off process can sometimes take as much as half an hour to complete.
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Slime - in that case maybe 10mm thick - has a tremendous drag, it seems to absorb all the energy the boat is trying to transmit through the water as progress; hence keen racing bods ' dry sailing ' with boats hauled out between sails if they aren't antifouled.
 
When I was moored in shoreham on the river I ended up using a hard racing antifoul as any of the eroding stuff washed off with the speed of the flood and ebb of the river.
 
Gixer,

hard scrubbable antifouling seems attractive in such circumstances, but the BIG problem is one ends up with a thick build up of paint - and stripping or scraping off old antifoul is the worst job in the world, let alone sailing !

Even with the eroding stuff I use ( on a drying mud mooring ), there's always some left to build up each season, so every few years I have to grit my teeth and strip / scrape it back to the gelshield - blasting would be an answer but it's expensive, and I'm rather wary since a cowboy outfit blasted a few boats at my club, removing the entire gelcoats as well...

For the OP, when I suggested gelshield I'd missed the point about wet patches on the hull, they would have to be sorted first or gelshield would be a disaster and worse than nothing at all.
 
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I've come to the conclusion that you use the cheapest antifoul you can find, some years it works some years it does not.
 
I'd go with the cheap stuff, too. Hempel cruising performer is what I use in Chi harbour. On a drying mooring, the antifoul that sinks into the mud goes black and stops working, anyway.
 
Thanks everybody for all the input. Sounds like primer and conventional antifoul is definitely the way to go. Another factor against the no-antifouling route is that the sandblasting has left a coarse textured finish which is great for helping paint to stick, but I suspect it's also ideal for helping marine life to get a good hold as well!

I was thinking of hard antifouling as the boat is moored beam on to the current which can be 2 or 3 knots for a while on the ebb, so there's not just the speed of the water but also a lot of turbulence around the hull. Gixer's experience at Shoreham suggests that non-eroding would work better in these circumstances. My regular mooring is hard standing with just a thin layer of mud, so mud isn't a factor except on the occasions when I stop on a mud berth when I'm off on a trip.

Perhaps an initial layer of hard antifoul to smooth off the surface and see how it works for the first year, and then (assuming it stays stuck on) see if I can get away with just the occasional scrub after that and touch up as necessary.
 
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