Coppercoat Antifouling

[lovinlife]

Has anyone here used coppercoat antifouling and does it really work as well as they say??? Its produced by aquarius marine coatings limited
pieter
Aquarius Marine Coatings Limited
Aquarius Marine Coatings Limited

[cat man do]

Originally Posted by lovinlife

Has anyone here used coppercoat antifouling and does it really work as well as they say??? Its produced by aquarius marine coatings limited
pieter
Aquarius Marine Coatings Limited
Aquarius Marine Coatings Limited

I know of a few users of coppercoat in Oz produced by different crowd's but basically copper suspended in epoxy.

They had differing result's depending on water temp.

While it seem's to work OK at best, they have usualy gone back to a traditional style of antifoul over the top.

So in the end it was an expensive and heavy process.

This was early day's of the product as well, thing's may well be different with newer formula's.

Dave

[fstbttms]

Here in the Bay Area, CopperPoxy-type products are among the least effective anti foulings I've ever had the misfortune to come across. YMMV, but I wouldn't recommend them to anyone, anywhere.

[lovinlife]

i kinda thought it sounded way to good to be true, but i may get a little just to try on a small runnabout to see if the product has improved? Thanks for the input
pieter

[hellosailor]

Some folks I sail with used "Copper-poxy" for a couple of seasons. First season, seemed to work great. Second season, despite a reapplication before launch, it seemed useless. The boat has had conventional bottom paints on it ever since, as it did before.

Considering the price and the labor to fair it, I'd pass unless you have an interest in epoxy-coating the bottom. By now it has been on the market long enough that we'd all be hearing ecstatic claims if it worked well all or most of the time.

[Alan Wheeler]

I have always been sceptical of this product. For the first few months or so, I could imagine the copper on the outside surface would do the job. But as it wears and corrodes away, eventually the epoxy is all that is left. The mix of epoxy may well indeed be rich with copper, but eventually there will be nothing less than a film of epoxy insulating the copper. So growth woudl be very happy to adhere. Copper paints are different in being either Porouse so they leach, or wearing so as they continue to expose fresh copper. Hard high speed anti-fouls still suffer from growth and need scrubbing. I can only see the epoxy based coatings praticle if they were lightly sanded each season to expose new copper. Growth would return as soon as that freshly exposed copper was gone again.

[fastcat435]

If I hear these comments I should not be using Coppercoat but the major mistake is made with the application I have been a satisfied user for almost 10 years and I know of yachts that have been given the treatment 14 years ago and it still works
After applying the 5 layers of coppercoat we first sand the surface with 320 and after that with 1200 to expose the copper to the salt water. I have taken one of our cats out of the water that is 4 years old and has had coppercoat since new and the growt was very limited and easy to remove.We did not have to sand the boat yet since the copper was still working.
We are very happy with the product and I can recomment it to everybody that has a yacht in the salt water.

[donradcliffe]

I can only give you 3 datapoints--3 boats whose coppercoat failed in less than 2 years, who were told that it must have been the application (done by trained agents), and who stopped throwing good money after bad and returned to traditional antifouling paint.

[fstbttms]

Originally Posted by fastcat435

We are very happy with the product and I can recomment it to everybody that has a yacht in the salt water.

The flaw in your argument is that you fail to take into account that a product that works well in one environment or region or location may not perform so well in another. So the anti fouling you are having success with in the Netherlands may be worthless ***** in California. From my experience, very, very few boats here in the Bay Area still use Copperpoxy or other similar copper-loaded epoxies. And it ain't 'cause they work so well here.

[Jentine]

I have used two such products - Copper Clad and CopperPoxy. The first on a sail boat and the second on a power boat.
The former, copper clad was applied to my boat when it was new and after a few years, I painted over it. It was too much work to keep it clean. It was required that the bottom be scrubbed several times per year, bringing the bottom to a "new penny" copper shine to be totally effective. It was a lot of work. In the product's defense, it did work as advertised when the bottom was clean.
The second product, CopperPoxy, I found to be very, very toxic and had to be applied with extreme care. It worked much better than the Copper Clad. However, I believe the reason for the better performance was because it was on a high speed boat. Cruising at 40 kts has a tendency to keep the crud off the bottom, anyways.
I have put neither product on my current boat and don't forsee doing so in the future.

[fastcat435]

I offcourse do not know how copppercoat will keep in the Bay area
but we have sailed the atlantic a couple of times anywhere between Durban in the In dian Ocean up to Miami and left the boat there for 3 months from there we have sailed to the azores , France , the Netherlands, Danmark, Spain and Portugal and the Med. wit pretty much the same result only in miami after 3 months stationary in the same location without current or any sailing done did we have some growth with a water temperature of 28 degrees C or around 85 F. but this was removed in one hour time .

[fstbttms]

And of course I just realized that we are talking about two different products; you with Coppercoat and me with Copperpoxy. My mistake!

[Alan Wheeler]

Not really your mistake. Some of the Copperpoxy coatings are called Coppercoat. But also, Epiglass make an ablative fouling paint called Coppercoat. So it is easy to get macts fuddled.

[BLuewaters]

HAs anyone ever used Coppercoat supplied by Aquarius Marine in the Uk. They claim that their product works for 10 years plus. they even got a review on a magazine which was quite positive.

[hellosailor]

"They claim that their product works for 10 years plus."
Ask them if they will stand behind that, with a written warranty for five or ten years of performance without reapplication or special maintenance, and whether they'll also pay to remove it, or pay your application costs, if you decide to remove it after the first or second season.

There are a few folks praising the various copper products, in limited waters and limited applications. But if it (copper+epoxy) was as universally great as the makers claimed--by now we'd all be using it. Instead of comparing notes on why we've given up on it.