Bottom painting an inflateable dinghy

[Neil Holck]

Got another question for everyone. After 2 months in the Florida marine environment, my inflateable dinghy has a heck of a lot of barnacle growth on the bottom. I flipped it over to let the air and sun kill the buggers and after it had dried, I scraped the dead barnacles off with a putty knife ( being very careful, of course ). My problem IS, how do I get the glue material off. (The residue that is left is the glue they create to hold themselves on, I suppose.). Then the other problem is, what can I put on (like bottom paint) that will still allow me to roll it up for storage at the end of the season and not crack and fall off like non-ablative would do, or get all over everything like ablative would do?
Anyone know the answers?

[MarkJ]

I use bleach to do the bottom of the dink.

The glue will be off the next time you haul it.

No one much uses antifouling on their dinks and I wonder why... So i am interested in what people say.


Mark

[Aussiesuede]

Muratic acid diluted to 50% does the trick effortlessly. Wear gloves and keep it away from stainless steel and rinse immediately. About $6 gallon @ Home Depot.

[Opie91]

Had good luck with Pettit inflatable bottom paint:

Pettit Antifouling Paint For Inflatable Boats

I'm in New England, so no real warm water test, but one coat last about 12 months in water time and a quart will do a 10 ft dink twice.

[Ziggy]

I found Aquagard inflatable bottom paint very effective last summer.
See this thread: http://www.cruisersforum.com/forums/...ml#post1191514

[knot smart]

i found that the west marine bottom paint formulated for a dinghy looks great! unfortunatley doesnt stick long term..i admit paint only sticks only as good as what it sitting on top of .. and i didnt do the hard work of trying to remove the first coat.

[jtsailjt]

Originally Posted by Aussiesuede

Muratic acid diluted to 50% does the trick effortlessly. Wear gloves and keep it away from stainless steel and rinse immediately. About $6 gallon @ Home Depot.

I used the Petit bottom paint on my last RIB and it worked pretty well but once a year I still had to scrub it and clean it before repainting, so this time around I think I'm going to keep it au natural and try using your suggestion whenever needed to keep it clean. I'm also able to regularly pull my dinghy out of the water on davits so I'm hopeful that will be enough to discourage most marine growth. But if the OP is forced to keep his dinghy in the water in a warm climate for fairly long periods of time, I can see where the dinghy bottom paint would be necessary to prevent growth from getting too far ahead of him. Petit did work pretty well for me.