In my yard where the endless refit of Flying Pig is slowly progressing, I
encountered a wood-boat cruiser; he'd built it himself.

He made up his own bottom paint each time he hauled. One part paint, one
part ground copper dust by volume, and about half that of cayenne pepper,
which yielded about two parts liquid volume. He routinely got at least 3
years from it, and his bottom was sparkling when it came out, so his
standards of "getting" 3 years apparently is a great deal higher than mine
would be.

FWIW and YMMV but it worked for him

L8R

Skip and Lydia, refitting as fast as we can

--
Morgan 461 #2
SV Flying Pig
http://tinyurl.com/384p2

"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you
didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail
away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore.
Dream. Discover." - Mark Twain
"Akka" wrote in message
oups.com...
We're about to repaint the bottom of our 50' boat with an ablative
paint that, as far as we can tell, doesn't contain any biocide other
than the copper content (which is pretty low, about 25%). We'd buy a
better paint, but that's all we can get where our boat is, in Turkey.

Are there biocides that can be added to bottom paint to keep the slime
off? The ones used in commercial paints don't seem to be available by
themselves. We've heard of people using tetracycline and even chili
peppers, but don't know if there's any real data to support those, and
besides, don't have a clue how much to use. Any ideas?