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sailorboy1 · 13-02-2019, 08:48

Just a story really.

My boat was in New England for it's for first 15 years. So it was hauled each year and only was in the water about 6 months/yr. The first owner used hard bottom paint and I don't know how many coats he applied during the 10 years he owned it, but it was flaking at various places from the start when I got it.

While in NE I used ablative paint and applied each Spring. I used the Interlux ACT single season paint, which is pretty soft (yet the power wash guys each Fall still never seemed to be able to blast it off). I never was able to really do a great job in the 1 week I would have prior to haul to prep and paint the boat each year. The paint would have a reasonable amount of growth on it each fall on haul out.

34 months ago when getting ready in NE I knew I was going to be leaving to cruise that year. So I switched over to Interlux CSC as it was compatible with the ACT and a multi-season paint. I managed to do a better job on prep, but not a great job. And off cruising we went.

By the end of first year we had traveled from Boston to the Bahamas and back up to St Augustine FL. While in the Bahamas I had noticed I was starting get a few barnacles, so since I was going to be in St Augustine a month I decided to get the bottom cleaned. I expected "some" growth, but the diver said there was 100% coverage on the bottom with small barnacles. So that was was cleaning #1 on my multi-season CSC in April 2017 and was 1 year from application.

I did a little more cruising in the South and then went into Brunswick GA for hurricane season. Before leaving there in Nov I had the bottom cleaned again. The diver again said there was 100% coverage and that was cleaning #2 in Nov 2017.

I left Brunswick GA in Nov and arrived in to Marathon Fl arriving mid Dec 2107, where I got "stuck" and our plans got screwed up so we were on a mooring there till end of Feb 2018. I could tell the bottom was building soft growth so before leaving I got it cleaned again. The diver as expected said it had a good soft growth layer on it and he could see some areas of blue starting to show (that would be the ACT paint under the CSC). So the CSC multi-season paint sounded to be pretty much gone after 22 months. That was cleaning #3 in Feb 2018, but was now soft growth.

Left Marahron and headed North and stopped in Fernandina Beach Fl to visit family. This turned into a "solve family problems" stop and a hold for some dental work and we were there a month. I could tell we were growing a soft mat on the hull again, but as it had only been 2 months I didn't think it was much so didn't do anything. Well once underway I could tell we had a serious growth on the hull and our max speed was down almost 2 knots.

So while at anchor for a couple of days in GA I went into the water and scraped as far as I could reach. There was a 1/2"-1" layer mat of soft growth on the hull over the complete hull. A few days later I was in Beaufort SC and got a diver to finish the cleaning job. So that was bottom cleaning#4 in May 2018. This again was all soft growth.

I then continued going North and went into the Chesapeake, up the Potomac to DC, through the C&D Canal, out the Delaware up the coast to Maine. Then turned around and headed back South, again going up the Delaware and down the Chesapeake. By Sept 2018 we were in Norfolk VA and on a nice hot day decided to go for a swim. Since I was in the water I decided to clean the bottom as good as I could. It had been 4 plus months and I expected there to be a lot of soft growth again based on the last couple of times. But, there wasn't really much more than a slime layer on the hull.

We continued south to Jacksonville Fl stopping along the way in all the normal places including a week in Fernandina Beach, where we had grown the mat earlier in the year. Stayed in a marina in the downtown area of Jax from beginning of Nov to current. Last week week we hauled out to do a bottom paint job. It had been 34 months since I last painted, 9 months since we had grown the massive soft mat layer, and 5 months since I had cleaned the bottom at all in Norfolk. So I expected there to be a pretty impressive growth on the bottom.

But, there wasn't. In fact the hull was pretty much clean and you could still seen the places I had missed in Norfolk. There wasn't a single barnacle larger than 1/4" and hardy any on them. If you didn't know that the paint was 34 months old you would have considered just putting the boat right back into the water. Turns out that multi-season CSC paint was still on about half the boat and the rest was either 4 years of single season ACT or the 8 year hard paint under that. Going at it pretty hard with the power washed got over half the hull stripped of paint as I expected because I had known for years that the hard paint the last owner had been using was flaking.

In the end the CSC multi-season paint started having hard growth in 1 year. Then soft growth became a problem for the second year. After that for next 10 months the paint only seemed to have a slime problem that wasn't reducing our speed at all.

In thinking about it I wonder why the paint seemed to get "better". The one thing I can think of is that for the first 2 years when motoring I tended to do so at 5 knots. But the last 10 months I increased that to 6 knots as I determined it wasn't really using more fuel (as a mpg).

And that's the end of the story if you made it this far.

Tayana42 · 13-02-2019, 10:27

Sailorboy1, as I understand it you have to be moving the boat at 6 or 7 knots for ablative paint to work sufficiently. Also, it sounds as though you need to have your bottom cleaned more often. The buildup of old flaky paint probably isn’t doing you any good either. When I had a boat on the east coast in the water year round, Chesapeake Bay, Florida, Long Island Sound, I had great success with Pettit Trinidad. You probably know it is a semi hard paint with a high copper content. It always lasted 2 to 3 years. I wasn’t so smart then about having it cleaned so it probably would have been even better if it was cleaned regularly.

I now have my boat in Southern California and still use Pettit Trinidad. I’m now having dive service clean the bottom monthly and I’m getting 3-4 years on a paint job. I’m due for one now and it is time to take the built up layers off. That will be an a pensive job so I’ve been putting it off but this spring it will need to be done.

sailorboy1 · 13-02-2019, 11:47

I consider it a false economy to get long life out of bottom paint by cleaning it frequently.

sailorboy1 · 13-02-2019, 11:50

The copolymer in the new ablative paints aren't suppose to need speed like the old ones to work.

fstbttms · 13-02-2019, 12:29

Quote:

Originally Posted by sailorboy1

I consider it a false economy to get long life out of bottom paint by cleaning it frequently.

You'd rather spend your time dragging around a carpet of soft growth or a bottom 100% covered in shelled animals? "False economy"? Bwahahahaha!

Jason Flare · 13-02-2019, 12:38

Quote:

Originally Posted by fstbttms

You'd rather spend your time dragging around a carpet of soft growth or a bottom 100% covered in shelled animals? "False economy"? Bwahahahaha!

I finally agree with you fast bottoms. We had to find common ground eventually.

Sailorboy, you were traveling 2knots slower when growth was at its worst. That’s pretty bad.

fstbttms · 13-02-2019, 12:40

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jason Flare

Sailorboy, you were traveling 2knots slower when growth was at its worst. That’s pretty bad.

Not to mention his increased fuel consumption and the attendant hydrocarbon emissions.

sailorboy1 · 13-02-2019, 16:43

It was just a real story. I should have know what would happen, but wasn’t thinking straight after the past 4 days of boat work labor. I’m not going to battle back against people wanting to spin something from a line or two out of the story. This isn’t some “news” channel.

Wood · 13-02-2019, 17:14

. Next it will be bovines. Nevermind.

Stu Jackson · 13-02-2019, 17:53

sb1, thanks for sharing that long story. It reflects the many experiences many of us have had. While I've never met fstbttms, Matt was very helpful to me when we had an incident in Aug. 2016 where we needed a diver to retrieve an anchor and rode that had gotten wrapped around our prop shaft at the very start of our trip from SF to BC and we were anchored off Sausalito. While he wasn't close by, he was very helpful and supportive with text messages and resources. His knowledge of bottom paint and his ability to share reality has been evident on many boating forums. Not everyone appreciates his input, but that's only because he is blunt and truthful.

fstbttms · 13-02-2019, 18:32

Thanks for the kind words, Stu.

See, what sailorboy1 fails to understand is that by cleaning your bottom infrequently and letting it become foul (as he obviously did), aggressive and abrasive cleaning measures are then needed to remove the fouling growth. This (of course) also removes anti fouling paint, shortening your bottom job's useful lifespan. But by cleaning relatively frequently and never letting the bottom become even moderately foul, the cleaning can always be a gentle one, keeping the paint on the hull where it belongs. This kind of best management practice will ensure that you get maximum paint lifespan and anti fouling performance, not to mention dramatically reducing haulout frequency.

sailorboy1 · 13-02-2019, 18:38

If I had only been there instead of the Internet

heron237 · 13-02-2019, 19:13

If only we lived in a perfect world.... where maximum bottom paint efficiencies were the order of the day.....Remember don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good enough, and this sort of talk exposes the banality of anality to paraphrase Elie Wiessel

sailorboy1 · 14-02-2019, 06:01

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jason Flare

Sailorboy, you were traveling 2knots slower when growth was at its worst. That’s pretty bad.

I traveled a total of about 50 miles with that growth. The bottom had been cleaned about 2 months prior. This was an extreme growth location/condition occurrence. This spinning of the story to make it sound like I don't maintain the bottom of my boat is just BS. I note that somehow that after that growth occurrence the fact that I traveled well over 2000 miles and 9 months not having the bottom cleaned and then hauled out with basically a clean bottom is just ignored.

Last week just prior to going into the yard to do a bottom job I motored at max throttle and noted the speed. Yesterday after doing the bottom I did it again and noted the speed. I picked up 0.3 knots for the $1980 I spent on my bare new 100% growth free and clean prop/shaft.