I just had my
boat painted with Pettit Trinidad Pro(professionally applied version of Trinidad SR). I had it painted with the same paint 3 years ago. When I had it hauled it only had 20 barnicles on it and it had not been cleaned by a diver since last June. There was a thin buildup of slime that came off easily. The barnicles came off with just a flick of a finger. I probably could have had a diver clean it and gotten another year out of it.
The sail drives and props were a different matter. They were totally covered. I was loosing about 1.5 knots of speed and almost doubling my normal
fuel consumption. I had tried some two part stuff I got from West
Marine and had barnicles growing in two months. At the recommendation of the local boatyard I had Pettit Vivid
bottom paint applied to the props and saildrives. Vivid has a 3 part process that includes an
epoxy barrier coat to protect the saildrives from the copper in paint. He claimed that the Vivid lasted longer than Propspeed. He claimed that he was getting 2 years out of the Vivid but only 1 year from Propspeed. I had an opportunity to be under the boat last weekend and the drives and props are still clean. I had motored about 100 miles since having the paint applied and I was interested in seeing if I had any adhesion issues. The drives and props looked like the paint had just been put on and that was after 5 weeks in the water. At two months and much less distance traveled I had several areas on the props where the zinc chromate primer was showing on the props with the WM stuff. We made an interesting observation when we pulled the boat. Barnicles were thicker and better adhered to the places on the prop hubs and saildrives that still had antifouling paint on them than they were to the places where the zinc chromate primer was exposed.
Clearly 5 weeks is not enough time for any concrete evaluation but so far so good. I'll make another report in the fall.
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