Parallax wrote:
Practical Sailor just had a letter about boatyards not letting ppl do
their own bottom painting but still charging an arm and leg to have
the yard do it. My experience is that yards do a crappy job with
almost no surface preparation except for a pressure wash. The few
times I have allowed a yard to do it was a waste of money as it fouled
in less than 3 months. 6 years ago, I hauled my boat and sanded the
bottom, applied 3 coats of hard CuO based paint (BottomKote or
something like that)and suddenly had to stop sailing due to business
problems. My boat sat for 4 years being used very little in a place
that fouled heavily. Finally, I had her hauled to be brought to my
home and was amazed to find NO fouling at all. A boat next to mine
was so heavily fouled it grew oysters. I know from some past
experience that my own bottomcoating job is superior to that done by
the yardss but this was amazing. Did I do something right or just get
lucky?
From my experience, yards will use the cheapest formulation that works
in their area most years. Frankly, that makes sense.
On our first moored boat, I didn't know anything and paid the yard to do
the bottom at the start of a particularly bad year. Within a month, the
growth was almost 2" thick. They hauled, scraped and recoated the bottom
with something better at their cost.
Since, I've applied Practical Sailor's recommendations and have had
essentially no growth survive the powerwashing.
One year, as a test, I didn't overcoat our "hard" paint (supposedly it
was "dead" after 6 months' exposure to air. Little survived the
powerwashing, but there were a few carcasses of hard growth.
I few years ago, I started using an ablative paint and haven't had hard
growth survive powerwashing except where I didn't touch up the hard
paint showing through (another test). This time, I put two coats at the
waterline, a single coat below. We'll see how things worked this year,
though of course I don't know how hard our powerwash guy works.
--
Jere Lull
Xan-a-Deux ('73 Tanzer 28 #4 out of Tolchester, MD)
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