Dave wrote:
I'm going to be buying some bottom paint for the coming year before long.
The PO had used an ablative paint, and the last couple of seasons there was
still a decent amount remaining, so I just touched up using the same paint.
Noticed a lot of fouling when I hauled this year, and as I read a bit more
about these paints it appears that a normal ablative paint is good for just
one season even if plenty of paint remains on the bottom. It appears that
(leaving aside some exotics) only the copolymer ablative paints are good for
multiple seasons. Is this consistent with your experience?

My understanding is that ablative paint is still
(relatively) effective as long as there remains a layer to
slough (ablate) off to shed fouling.

I have not used ablative paints very much because they don't
leave a good fast finish on the hull, and we used hard epoxy
(Trinidad) on the tugboat because it was deeply discounted
and seemed likely to be cost-effective (which it has been...
3 years).

One thing to bear in mind is that you have to take off all
the old ablative paint if you want to put anything other
than the same type of ablative on. I'd assume this holds
true of putting copolymer ablative over older stuff.

Fresh Breezes- Doug King