"Bruce in Bangkok" wrote in message
...
Has anyone experience with anti fouling paints for cruising sailboats
that are in the water 100% of the time in tropical waters. Like most
cruisers we sail some of the time but the boat sits there a lot.

Before the demise of TBT paints I used Jotun HB-66 and got 3 years
plus out of a paint job. Since there is no more TBT I have talked to
everyone I meet that has painted their boats recently and I get a
uniform "it ain't no good" response to everyone, no matter what paint
they used. Cheap stuff or the top of the line International paints the
answer seems to be the same.

As I have two boats to paint in the next few months if anyone has any
positive experience with legal anti fouling paints I would be really
glad to hear about them.

I can still get old fashion copper bottom paint here in Thailand and
unless someone tells me about something that really works I think I'm
going to go with the old fashioned stuff. It worked pretty good 40
years ago and it should work pretty good today, which is better then
the reports I've been getting on the new expensive stuff. To quote an
old Aussie I know, "if you gotta scrub it every month you might as
well use barn paint".

Bruce-in-Bangkok
(Note:remove underscores
from address for reply)

Ask at your local paint or hardware store. There is a mold inhibitor made
for exterior house paints. It contains TBT. You can use it as an additive
with a good, copper-based, epoxy paint such as Petit Trinidad SR. It
actually works better than the original TBT paints such as Tri-Lux. The
brand name is DI-ALL liquid mildewcide. It comes in 1.1 oz bottles one of
which is to be mixed with a gallon of paint. I use 4 bottles to a gallon
since the active ingredient tributyltin (bis oxide) is listed as 25% of the
one ounce. I'm going on five years of cruising and mooring with a bottom of
eight coats of Trinidad and it's not dead yet though it needs a good
scrubbing every three months or so.

Unfortunately, it seems DI-ALL is difficult or impossible to find anymore in
the US but I anticipated that and purchased 36 bottles about ten years ago
($5.49 each) back when it was readily available. It wouldn't surprise me if,
in a backwoods like Thailand, it was still readily available.

Wilbur Hubbard