How Often to Hand-Clean the Bottom?

[AD28]

ablative paint, right?

wouldn't a simple bar towel wipe-down do the trick?

[Tayana42]

We have found in Southern California and in north Florida that Pettit Trinidad, which is a semi hard one part anti fouling paint, lasts for us about 3 years with monthly light scrubbing with a cloth or white pad.


S/V B'Shert

[fstbttms]

Originally Posted by Tayana42

We have found in Southern California and in north Florida that Pettit Trinidad, which is a semi hard one part anti fouling paint, lasts for us about 3 years with monthly light scrubbing with a cloth or white pad.

That is typical lifespan for properly maintained Trinidad. Nothing "semi hard" about it though. It's as tough and durable as a modified epoxy paint gets.

[Rick Williams]

ok, sometimes I'm confounded about the point of this forum. Someone posts a question and for the most part people respond with their experiences. So I respond with what I know to be true for me and then occasionally someone comes back and tells me that's not right except why would I bother posting if it weren't something I've found to be effective?
For years?
I see you're a marine service provider but what I've described is how the marine service providers do it here.

[fstbttms]

Originally Posted by Rick Williams

ok, sometimes I'm confounded about the point of this forum. Someone posts a question and for the most part people respond with their experiences. So I respond with what I know to be true for me and then occasionally someone comes back and tells me that's not right except why would I bother posting if it weren't something I've found to be effective?
For years?
I see you're a marine service provider but what I've described is how the marine service providers do it here.

No offense intended, but I've put scrapers on boat hulls and I can tell you that they do not clean the hull to bare paint. While a scraper is generally necessary to remove very thick soft growth or hard growth, it absolutely does not get the paint truly clean, not like a pad or cloth will. Further, when I say that a paint manufacturer would advise against cleaning their products this way, you can take that to the bank.

If a scraper is necessary to clean all of your hull, then I suggest that you have waited too long to clean or paint it. I know that in California, boat owners would quickly abandon any hull cleaner who regularly used a scraper on paint in good condition.

[Stephen Fascian]

Sail more, I have no slime on my bottem. I'm using Interlux cfc, I'm crusing in the Virgin Islands.
Last year I used Sea Hawk bottem paint and I was scrubbing every two weeks. That paint worked well in Maine but in the tropics I got lots of growth on the bottem.
Next time put 3 coats along the water line and you should be fine

[svHyLyte]

Originally Posted by Rick Williams

ok, sometimes I'm confounded about the point of this forum. Someone posts a question and for the most part people respond with their experiences. So I respond with what I know to be true for me and then occasionally someone comes back and tells me that's not right except why would I bother posting if it weren't something I've found to be effective?
For years?
I see you're a marine service provider but what I've described is how the marine service providers do it here.

Rick--

While "fstbttms" and I generally have hugely different viewpoints on certain matters, usually of the Environmental kind, reading your post and his response, I don't believe his intent was to demean your contribution. He is (perish the thought!) correct in that a scraper applied lightly enough not to damage paint cannot do a very thorough job of cleaning one's hull and any residual "slime" prevents anti-fouling paint from working very well. The nice thing about "SR" (or "Slime Resistant") bottom paints is that they do, in fact, resist or limit the development of slime on the hull which, otherwise, will provide a "barrier coating" between "growies" and the paint intended to resist them. A thorough, proper, cleaning from time-to-time, either by an owner or a diver (even if your disagree with his/her politics), is the best way to preserve and extend the life of one's bottom paint and so the interval between haul outs. N'any case, don't take "fstbttms" comments personally. I'm sure they were meant in a general sense.

FWIW...

[boatman61]

The best way to get ablative paint to work is sail the bludi boat.. if you want a floating cottage use a hard antifoul.. then you can clean it by hand..

[Cheechako]

The answer is "what water are you in?". In the water you specify I would clean it monthly. In 5-6 weeks in some places the barnacles will be up to 1/2" diameter. In the DR, our few months old Trinidad bottom paint was so loaded it was amazing. I probably scraped two 5 gal buckets worth off that boat. it was such a big job we delayed leaving and finished the next day. All the bottom feeders were coming up as I was scraping looking for food. The boat had sat at anchor for 6 weeks.
That was probably a worst case scenario.
IME, bottom paint doesn't prevent growth in those areas, it just kills it after it's attached.
Yes a scraper will not clean off the small residual ring from a scraped off barnacle, (unless you are intent on getting that and some paint off with it) but it's more a visual thing than a problem.... especially compared with the mountains you took off. Unless you are willing to clean nearly weekly in the tropics, you're gonna have some small stuff on there.

[tomfl]

Originally Posted by boatman61

The best way to get ablative paint to work is sail the bludi boat.. if you want a floating cottage use a hard antifoul.. then you can clean it by hand..

Not sure what kinda tri the OP has but I would add with ablative paint boat speed is also a consideration . I use Ameron ABC which claims you need to get your boat speed up to 10 knots or so for it to work. Lots of commercial small boats, think tugs, FWC, USCG use the stuff because they go that fast. On the other hand something like a 30 knot sports fisherman might take it off too fast. I make a point of sailing my cat over ten knots as often as possible; even if that means looking for the right conditions.

[boatman61]

Originally Posted by tomfl

Not sure what kinda tri the OP has but I would add with ablative paint boat speed is also a consideration . I use Ameron ABC which claims you need to get your boat speed up to 10 knots or so for it to work. Lots of commercial small boats, think tugs, FWC, USCG use the stuff because they go that fast. On the other hand something like a 30 knot sports fisherman might take it off too fast. I make a point of sailing my cat over ten knots as often as possible; even if that means looking for the right conditions.

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

[David B]

Originally Posted by Gone2long

About a year ago, I bought an older epoxy over wood boat and immediately hauled it due to the junk on the bottom. That cost me $1,500 in crane/storage costs and another 1.5k in labor and materials. Not an experience I would like to repeat yearly.

The boat is in the tropics, and when I bought it, was moored in a brackish estuary, where growth was abundant. The guy who hauled it suggested that I clean the slime off it every month or so, to keep barnacles etc., from growing, so I did so for about a year.

However, as a result, even though I used mostly just a glove, lots of ablative paint came off, especially around the water line, and now I get barnacles there and in other places on the hull where the paint is thin.

My questions then are as follows:

"Did I get a wrong steer from the hauler (for perhaps obvious reasons) , and should I have cleaned less frequently?"

"Also, should I clean less frequently now, allowing barnacles to grow, then simply pop them off with a small scraper, while continuing my gloved cleaning, in order to avoid another, costly haul?"

"Lastly, from reading other threads, it seems that many folks clean much less often, so what is the risk, if any, to the hull while letting some barnacles grow to the point of potentially slowing down the boat, and how often does one really need to clean the bottom?"


I know, I know, "it depends ..." : )

Let's hear what you guys and gals think on any or all of the above.

Best Regards,

G2L

Depends on your area of course, and the effectiveness of the antifouling paint. For us, we got tired of scrubbing antifouling paint off during the year, and slapping more on each season.
We now have Coppercoat on our hull (the real stuff), and after a full year of going nowhere, had only about 3mm/1/8th" of light furring around the waterline and that's it. The furring just falls off with your hand (or a brush). We are now five years in, and looking at the hull, I expect we will get at least another 10 years out of it.

The yard who was doing our boat was not familiar with Coppercoat, and frankly, it nearly got too hard - I nearly let them go with what they normally apply, but we are so glad we stuck to our guns!

[rbyham]

Originally Posted by Stephen Fascian

Sail more, I have no slime on my bottem. I'm using Interlux cfc, I'm crusing in the Virgin Islands.
Last year I used Sea Hawk bottem paint and I was scrubbing every two weeks. That paint worked well in Maine but in the tropics I got lots of growth on the bottem.
Next time put 3 coats along the water line and you should be fine

+1 on the interlux CSC and regular use of the boat... preferably a couple times a week. I get easily three years in warm Charleston waters and can extend to fourth year with a bi-monthly diver.

[four winds]

The hard paint on mine is now 15 months old. A well known brand with no anti slime additive. Sometimes I sail regularly and other times I stay in the same spot for weeks or months. Sometimes in salt water and others brackish water.

Initially I had some slime that would I would wipe off about one a month. Or I would sail an overnighter and the bottom would be clean again.

After the first few months, maybe five or six, barnacles would appear within the same cleaning interval. Honestly, it wasn't a set schedule. I would simply judge by looking at the waterline to determine when cleaning was indicated. In warmer salt water maybe every three weeks. In cooler or brackish water maybe six to eight weeks.

I free dive in swim trunks to clean so it's easy to put it off in the winter months, though thankfully the growth was no worse even at the greater time interval. Also in cold water I would do half one day and finish the next. Really zapped my energy.

The barnacles were/are almost entirely within a foot of the waterline. They are small and tightly spaced, and dead. But they won't wipe off easily with a rag or scotch pad. A wide sheetrock knife held very shallow wipes them off like they aren't there, including 95% of the calcium rings. Another swipe and 99% of the rings are gone. It's not much effort and looking closely I can'see any effect on the paint itself. Never see paint in the water, only barny bits.

Once around and then another lap with a rag or scotch pad cleans the rest of the slime off. The boat sails well with a clean bottom and it's a good workout for an aging sailor.

So how often for me, 3-8 weeks depending on conditions.

Fifteen months in and the paint appears to have the same texture from the roller application that it began with.

[Miz Pea]

First, you have an "epoxy over wood" boat. I can only tell you my experiences with fiberglass boats. I know nothing about which bottom paint works best on wood epoxied hulls.

With fiberglass coated with interlux bottom paint, back when we kept our motorboat in the water at our dock in brackish waters 1 mile west of middle Tampa Bay:

1. Summertime (water temps 80-92 degrees) - we scrubbed off the bottom and waterline every 10 days to 2 weeks with a piece of carpet wrapped around a block of wood. All we ever cleaned off was the green slime. It was an outboard boat, and once we forgot and left the motor down for a week and the skeg and prop grew barnacles.
2. Wintertime (water temps 70-75 degrees) - scrub once a month. Much less green slime growth in the winter.

Fall and Spring - scrub about every 3 weeks. The bottom paint would last about 2 1/2 years.

When the water temps got below 70 it was too cold to go in, but the green growth when the water would warm up a month or so later was negligible. Point being that the green slime grows much slower in colder water.

Most folks here are sailboaters, so this may not be feasible for deep-keelers, but we always made a trip out of it. Would anchor just off a sandbar at low tide, let the dogs on to the beach, scrub off the bottom which took about 15 minutes, and then sit in a beach chair with toes in the sand and a beer in the hand. The dogs loved it and so did we. Then we got a boat lift, and so the trips to the sandbar became much lighter.

When I was a kid I once had a summer job scraping barnacles off boat hulls. This made me kind of hyper later in life about keeping the hull clean of barnacles. They are a PITA to remove.