Mahe 36: Hull

[Talbot]

best plan is to identify the manufacturer of the system you want to apply, and then ask the manufacturer whether it can be applied diectly over the previous stuff, or whether there needs to be a barrier coat - if so what to use.

[jean1146]

Kipper if I was you I would check with FP first before you do anything because of the warranty issue.
JC.

[Kipper]

I emailed the dealer last week but haven't heard back I think it may be holiday time in France so there may not be anyone at the factory who can provide a sensible answer.

[mark]

Hi JC,I also had blister problems and FP took care of the problem and send me the check.You should contact Thierry Billard directly.
Mark

[Jef & Marin, Netherlands]

Mark, what do you mean the hulls stay so dry? Every time after a rough sail (tacking with waves in strong wind) I have to dry the hulls. Wave slamming pushes seawater into the bilge pump tubes.
We purchased four one way valves (Whale brand). Hope this helps.

Yesterday we arrived in our winter harbor here in the Netherlands. Miss Poes stys in the water this winter. We just reached 4000 nm this summer by visiting all countries in the Baltic. Total distance now 7222 nm.

Our boat is hull nr 88, "Miss Poes", delivered begin of june 2008.

We put our boat on the sands to clean the Coppercoat and chack the anodes before winter. The folding propellor zinc anodes (imitation but fitting well) turned out to be gone around 90 % after being in the water exactly 6 months! Beware. I don't know the cause: brackish Baltic water, voltages / current due to shore connection, or inferior quality. Any suggestions?
The sail drive anodes are still good enough from new.

Good sailing,
Jef

[Cotemar]

Jef,

Never had any water in the bilges during the Trans-Atlantic crossing or during this summer’s season.

Another possible sollution would be to use a Loop in the drain hose
instead of the overhead U in the hose. See Attached picture.
It would mean changing out or adding more hose, but would be easier to drain or empty during winter storage.

Can you post some pictures of Miss Poes on the beach for bottom cleaning ?

I am painting the props with PropSpeed for next year to see if the Prop Zincs last longer.
Once I cleaned the factory clear coat off the props my Prop Zincs went fast also.

My sail drive anodes are good also.

How do you like the Coppercoat ? I may put that on also.
10+ year bottom epoxy works for me.

Mark

[MKB53]

Martin and Sonia Hull # 42 Reflexion.

I am keen to hear how the CopperCote works out.

Our hulls have been dry except for occasional fresh water spill from overfilling. I think the guage sender unit is not seated properly and a bit of water escapes if you leave it overflowing too long.

[Georg + Sandra]

Originally Posted by Jef & Marin, Netherlands

Mark, what do you mean the hulls stay so dry? Every time after a rough sail (tacking with waves in strong wind) I have to dry the hulls. Wave slamming pushes seawater into the bilge pump tubes.
We purchased four one way valves (Whale brand). Hope this helps.

Yesterday we arrived in our winter harbor here in the Netherlands. Miss Poes stys in the water this winter. We just reached 4000 nm this summer by visiting all countries in the Baltic. Total distance now 7222 nm.

Our boat is hull nr 88, "Miss Poes", delivered begin of june 2008.

We put our boat on the sands to clean the Coppercoat and chack the anodes before winter. The folding propellor zinc anodes (imitation but fitting well) turned out to be gone around 90 % after being in the water exactly 6 months! Beware. I don't know the cause: brackish Baltic water, voltages / current due to shore connection, or inferior quality. Any suggestions?
The sail drive anodes are still good enough from new.

Good sailing,
Jef

Hi Jef and Marin
Please send a mail to our e mail adress.
I can't get one through the adress you gave us in Amsterdam.
Sandra + Georg Cologne

[Jef & Marin, Netherlands]

I saw some questions on coppercoat. I will tell our experiences:

Application:
This spring we removed the off-factory antifouling and epoxy primer. This took more than 12 man-days, and a lot of material, so better purchase your boat naked underwater.
We then put on 3 layers of the solvent-free anti-osmosis epoxy as recommended by the suppliers of coppercoat, called ME 100. This is a high-grade epoxy as used on drilling platform etc. Although it has probably very good anti-osmosis properties, I can not recommend this; probably due to it being solvent-free it gives a distinct orange peel effect making it impossible to sand the coppercoat afterwards. This might also reduce boat speed. If I did it again I would take a different anti-osmosis system.
Then we applied 4-5 layers of coppercoat, all in one day. This was a long day with 3 people, one just for mixing and distributing the stuff.
After a week of drying and hardening, we sanded the coppercoat using a rotating sander and velcro-backed scoring pads. These are of a scotch-brite like material: a sanding foam from Metabo, 150 mm diameter. Using these soft pads instead of sanding discs was necessary because of the orange peel.
I did not remove the white protection on the sugar scoops to apply under it, but if I did it again I would. Neither did I remove the rubber around the saildrive.
Without these it already was a monster job.

Experiences:
Of course the light blue antifouling looks much better than the quickly discoloring coppercoat.
The boat was for 1.5 months on saltwater and then for 4 months on brackish water (the Baltic). Then salt again, now on sweet water for the winter. After launching this spring and one month of salt water we dried Miss Poes on sandy tidal water. There were no barnacles, and light slime (green patches) on a few spots. Easily removed in 10 minutes with 10*20 cm pads.
One sail drive (untreated) was completely covered with young barnacles. The other saildrive had one half completely covered with barnacles, the other side with green hairy algae. So the coppercoat obviously does a job.
After returning from the Baltic to the Wadden sea, we dried the ship again on tidal water. Removing the slime off the coppercoat took 1 hour for the two of us. Doing this each half year is recommended.

My conclusion is that for these cold waters here up north coppercoat is a good alternative for self-polishing antifouling. Less work; a high initial investment, a terrible job but no costs (antifouling and lifting) after that; environmentally much better.
I have been looking at the web a lot before deciding for coppercoat. There are very positive and very negative messages. Part of the messages (pro and con) are most probably put there by people who earn their money by selling coppercoat or "normal" antifouling.
Additionally, I have had email contact with a independent coppercoat user cruising the Caribbean.
I have the impression that coppercoat is OK for colder waters, but might be inadequate for Caribbean waters. As I understand all antifoulings are inadequate for the Caribs except for extremely poisonous stuff which is illegal in Europe anyhow.
Seeing the amount of work it makes no sense to put on coppercoat if you keep the boat just a few years.

There are cheaper alternatives to coppercoat: there is another brand and some people mix copper powder and epoxy themselves. I have no idea on effectiveness and did not want to take a risk.

Regards,
Jef

[MKB53]

Hi Tor
Welcome to the thread. There is a whole collection of useful information if you go back through the old discussion.

If you have managed to cure the irritating noise you will be very popular!

Can you provide a bit more information on exactly where you put the sealant and how you managed to get access?

We had a red wine spillage which went into some of the unsealed gaps and even drying that out was not easy!

Regards
Martin

[le mistral]

Hi Martin,

How is Australia these days? Wish I could have been there - here we have cold cold weather with snow and ice. Not much for sailing, but we have installed a good heater so it's nice to be at sea also this time of the year, although we don't do it that often. But New Years Day we definetaly take her out for an afternoon time of celebration as a kind of a vor-spiel. Great fun and a kind of tradition for us.

The noice came from where the wooden panel is mounted on the floor in the cabins. As an example we'll take the dobbel one aft on the starboard side. To the right side of the door when entering the cabin, down at the floor, there is a short wooden list that you remove (it's glued on, but use carefully a knife or something). You will then see the sealer that the builder put along the connection between the wooden vertical panel and the plastic. Remove the sealer. The wooden panel goes into a narrow slot in the plastic and as long as there is no flexible material
injected between the wood and the plastic, you will have squeeking between these two types of material. I envidened the slot using wedges that allowed me to press down a rubber type of list as an isolation between wood and plastic.

I was able this way to reduce practically all noice, anyway when walking around the boat in the harbour. Also during sailing this problem was dramatically reduced, but there will always be a little something from noice when going in rough sea with a catamaran. And by the way, I also glued on rubber listing on the underside along the edge of the hatches on the floor everywhere.

I hope you understand what I mean and that it will help you getting rid of the problem. My experience is that this kind of trouble-shooting often inspires to go after other places where there might be noice, but I did not do that kind of effort yet as I experience the problem to be more or less gone.

But I did press a 20 mm hamp rope in the slot between the stairs and the wall before I found out about the real problem. It looks nice as well and stops dust and dirt to fall down there. And by the way, your accident with the red wine calls for a sealing around the floor in the saloon (if that was where you did it). It could as well have been e.g. milk, and I guess the smell would eventually force you to take out the whole thing.

Good luck anyway.

Regards,
Tor

Originally Posted by MKB53

Hi Tor
Welcome to the thread. There is a whole collection of useful information if you go back through the old discussion.

If you have managed to cure the irritating noise you will be very popular!

Can you provide a bit more information on exactly where you put the sealant and how you managed to get access?

We had a red wine spillage which went into some of the unsealed gaps and even drying that out was not easy!

Regards
Martin

[Jef & Marin, Netherlands]

Hi all,
I guess the source of the noise is different in all Mahe's. Reason for my guess is that we experience completely different sources of noise.
In Miss Poes, we had a very irritating noise from movement of the kitchen block.

The noise was initially caused by rubbing between the vertical sides of the hanging locker in the starboard bedroom and a vertical white piece of panel at the back of the locker which is glued to the hull with sikaflex.
Later, due to the movement, the vertical white panel detached from the sikaflex, so this noise stopped. But nearby a new and even more irritating noise occurred between the round curve of the kitchen block and the gelcoat above the starboard stairs.
The solution was to stick a many-times-folded piece of baking paper between wood and gelcoat. You first need a big screwdriver to increase the gap so it will fit between.
After a few months of sailing the baking paper has worn through, and we replace it. If all problems were so cheap to solve!

This summer a new noise appeared caused by rubbing between the panel between starboard bed and the engine room, and the sidepanel of the bed next to the diesel tank.
The cause is that the yellow/orange kit between these panels has come loose.
This noise is so bad it is nearly impossible to sleep during a night sail. (says someone who has slept close to running diesel engines)
Solving this is one of my winter jobs. I guess I will mount an aluminium 90 degrees corner strip out of sight, behind the panels, with many small screws. If this can not be reached I will mount a square wooden batten on the inside (this is uglier).

The Mahe is a creaking boat. Basically Fountaine Pajot should take better measures to prevent this in design and workmanhip of new ships. And should give more support to dealers to solve this in existing mahe's. But probably accepting and solving it with your own creativity is the best approach.
And keep posting so that all can benefit.
Jef

[Lucky]

or, good to see a fellow Halden chap on the Mahe thread! I have been reading up on the various noises emitted from all strange areas of the Mahe. My first experience was crewing on a friends boat when we sailed her from La Rochelle to Sarpsborg, Norway. I too could not sleep in the starbord aft cabin from all the noise in the galley and other parts of the boat.

The strange thing is that I did not experience this in my previous Athena 38 or in my current Belize 43. That said there is a small wooden piece above the freezer that skeaks when there is a bit of motion. The problem is that the Admiral deny me to fix it! She claims there must be a small feeiling of the tall ships even in a cat.

I guess the only thing to do is to carry on with supporting all wooden parts with a comination of adding Sikaflex and screws.

Merry Christmas and Happy New sailing Year to you all from Lucky

Happy lead free sailin

[Edmund]

So, I've finally made may way through the whole thread.

Some of you (Scott, JC and others) have reported blisters on your hulls, but I can't seem to find any good conclusions on this issue:
Have FP any explanations on why you can find blisters on "new" boats?
Do you find that your FPdealers and FP in general have handeled these problems OK, and what have they physically done with the blisters?

[Scott730]

Edmund
My FP Dealer has gone out of business, so I deal directly with FP for all Warranty work. So far I Have not had a problem getting things repaired or reimbursed for repairs I've had done. I believe the hull has a 5 year warranty.

Scott