How Often to Hand-Clean the Bottom?

[Schooner Chandlery]

Ours is a carvel planked wood boat. In general you NEVER want to have to scrape a wood boat. Period. Always best to keep the bottom clean as possible (as I previously discussed). Fair winds,

[guyrj33]

Micron CSC while an ablative paint is much harder than some of the other Micron formulations. I would use Micron CSC if I was scrubbing my boat monthly.

[Cheechako]

Just use a hard finish paint like Trinidad on your cruiser, you ARE going to be cleaning it, no point in removing all your paint in the process, or leaving it in the environment either.

[Calif.Ted]

I'm near San Diego, the Petit Trinidad Pro (65%) hard paint on my boat was 5 years old end of last month. Cleaned monthly or every three weeks in summer with carpet or towels as described by others here. I'll admit I'm pretty dumbfounded, I've usually had to paint every 3-4 years, I will be doing it soon.

[hsi88]

I wouldn't boat if I had to clean the hull every few weeks. I don't see a lot of growth on my boat in the Chesapeake after about 3 years of sitting in the water. The ice tends to clean it over the winter and I deal with whatever growth accumulates over the summer (not much). I think if I was down south, I would bite the bullet and get the copper-coat. Cleaning hulls is not a job I want to be doing in the murky waters around the marina. Repairing engines, plumbing work and topside cleaning is bad enough. Jumping in the water every few weeks isn't going to happen.

[svHyLyte]

Originally Posted by hsi88

I wouldn't boat if I had to clean the hull every few weeks. ... Cleaning hulls is not a job I want to be doing in the murky waters around the marina. Repairing engines, plumbing work and topside cleaning is bad enough. Jumping in the water every few weeks isn't going to happen.

Hire a dive service, generally in the $1.50 to $2.00 per foot range. You might be surprised a how much faster your boat is with a clean bottom/running gear. Having one's zinc's, and particularly shaft zinc's, checked and replaced as necessary is also an important, if not the most important, aspect of preserving and protecting your running gear/prop.

FWIW...

[Schooner Chandlery]

I don't usually dive on the boat and clean it -- but my husband does all the time. He sees the benefits as:

1. "Quality time" with the boat making sure everything is working tip-top.
2. Good exercise for his body that is free.
3. Not having to call another person or trust someone else's judgement on something important to him.

While I do occasionally help clean the hull (it's a big full keel boat with a 47ft waterline) this is really "his" thing. He's been cleaning the hull in chilly or downright cold Pacific waters since 2009 and so far sees no reason to change that. He did say, while we were in AK, that if we stayed up there he'd have to get a dry suit! Surprisingly fertile waters capable of a lot of fouling up there in SE AK.

If you exercise at all, why not just make this exercise part of your routine?

PS, while paying for a dive service, racer Dennis Conner in San Diego (which people here report as high fouling...) doesn't use bottom paint on his boat but instead just has a diver clean it once a week. He states it's a break-even proposition for him cost-wise between paying a weekly diver or re-doing bottom paint often enough that it works well. I don't know what kind of slick epoxy paint is on the bottom though.

[fstbttms]

Originally Posted by Schooner Chandlery

PS, while paying for a dive service, racer Dennis Conner in San Diego (which people here report as high fouling...) doesn't use bottom paint on his boat but instead just has a diver clean it once a week. He states it's a break-even proposition for him cost-wise between paying a weekly diver or re-doing bottom paint often enough that it works well. I don't know what kind of slick epoxy paint is on the bottom though.

I find this difficult to believe. Anybody who has ever cleaned a boat without anti fouling paint in California knows that even weekly cleanings are not enough to keep the bottom truly clean, certainly not race-ready clean. I can't imagine that a serious racer would consider this. I have dived unpainted boats on a twice weekly schedule here in the Bay Area and was unable to keep up with the growth.

Maybe DC is using a foul-release coating. That, I'd believe.

[Cheechako]

Originally Posted by Schooner Chandlery

If you exercise at all, why not just make this exercise part of your routine?

PS, while paying for a dive service, racer Dennis Conner in San Diego (which people here report as high fouling...) doesn't use bottom paint on his boat but instead just has a diver clean it once a week. He states it's a break-even proposition for him cost-wise between paying a weekly diver or re-doing bottom paint often enough that it works well. I don't know what kind of slick epoxy paint is on the bottom though.

My contention also to some extent. Still... I paint. Paint may retard growth, but things grow readily on it and then die. Green slime, huge barnacles etc are still there, especially in difficult harbors. OTOH, there are places like in Seattle where little will be on the boat after a couple years. The only paint I've ever had in 40 years that actually kept things from growing on it was Dutch Jotun, put on in Trinidad, and boat sat in Florida.

[Schooner Chandlery]

Originally Posted by fstbttms

I find this difficult to believe. Anybody who has ever cleaned a boat without anti fouling paint in California knows that even weekly cleanings are not enough to keep the bottom truly clean, certainly not race-ready clean. I can't imagine that a serious racer would consider this. I have dived unpainted boats on a twice weekly schedule here in the Bay Area and was unable to keep up with the growth.

Maybe DC is using a foul-release coating. That, I'd believe.

I really have no idea what sort of bottom paint he's got. A few years ago when we were active with a classic boat group in San Diego that DC was also active with, we ended up hearing about this but it was sort of an in-on-ear-and-out-the-other conversation because, like you, I cannot fathom not having some sort of bottom paint.

Having said that:

When we relaunched our boat in 2009 after a rebuild between 2007-2009, we weren't quite sure where the waterline would actually be. Previous owners had raised it by about 9" but we decided to paint to the design waterline as we knew we'd be hauling out in 2010 to fare the newly replanked hull and touch up as needed. OMG, the boat sat 4" low.

So, I hand-cleaned the topside paint (a traditional oil-based marine paint that could not be called slick by any stretch of the imagination) at the waterline (those 4") for 14 months until our haulout. The boat was in San Diego for 90% of that 14 months and I cleaned the waterline every 2 weeks. I was able to keep it clean but I would never, never want to have to clean like that on the entire bottom every 2 weeks. No way. We raised the waterline to pretty much right where the previous owners had it

[tomfl]

Originally Posted by boatman61

I'm a cheapskate.. I use Jotuns Red..

Can't find a place to buy it in the US. Some posts say you can get it down island. Any advice on cost and availability.

[Cheechako]

I've heard that Jotun no longer makes the deadly paint... but not sure. It wasn't available in the US even 15 years ago.

[gamayun]

Has anyone considered the possibility that past experience is all going to be moot because Irgarol has been discontinued? I didn't realize that it's not just Pettit Trinidad "SR", but many other paint manufacturers have been affected by this, too (Antifouling Companies Struggle with the Loss of Herbicide Irgarol | TotalBoat Show). I just dove on a friend's boat that had a recent bottom job of hard paint that had been sprayed on. It had been cleaned two weeks earlier and the sunny side already had streaks of algae on the rudder and mostly within a few inches of the waterline. Even a light brushing with my bare hand created a cloud of paint. I have my boat hauled now and really need to make a decision soon about what to use. I'm told that Pettit replaced Irgarol with Teflon, which seems like this could make it harder to paint over in the future. Whatever type is used, I am definitely going to roll on the paint. People I've spoken with seem to have much better results with rolled rather than sprayed bottom paint. Anyway, I think the next few years of results are going to be interesting and possibly much different than the expectations....

[boatman61]

Originally Posted by tomfl

Can't find a place to buy it in the US. Some posts say you can get it down island. Any advice on cost and availability.

I buy mine from the Fishermens Store in Ferragudo, Portugal.. last time I bought a load was about 5yrs back.. 45euro/2.5 litre cans.. its good to have friends.

[Gone2long]

Originally Posted by fstbttms

A scraper doesn't really clean the hull. It leaves a layer of slime that provides a base from which future fouling will grow. Certainly no paint manufacturer would recommend it.

I agree and I used only a glove until forced to scrape with a scraping tool. The barnacle growth became worse as a result since it is near impossible, in my experience, to not scrape off paint and get off slime off using a hand tool of any sort. Hand tools will not get rid of the slime.

To get the slime off, you need to feel the bottom, ideally with something not too abrasive. When necessary, I use a scraper, with gloves that have tiny rubber bumps in them and, ideally, if barnacles are encountered, we simply break them off.

My experience is that, when underway, the calcium coatings left by the barnacles will usually fall off. Or, you can nudge them off with your fingers, though that is very time consuming process, not easily done while holding one's breath.

My two cents,

G2L