TBT Antifouling - Morally Reprehensible ?

[VirtualVagabond]

I don't give a rat's about so called morality. It's total BS imposed by a few on the many, excluding themselves, and using guilt and society as the driver.
What saddens me is the fact that huge numbers of otherwise intellegent people get sucked in and become the idiot drum beaters.
The mere fact that posters have the arrogance and self righteousness to say... "where are your morals?", begs the question... "where are your brains?"

Having said that, I care about the environment enormously. I just refuse to get sucked into stupidly looking like I'm making a difference shuffling deck chairs on the Titanic.

I'm delighted that all the little fishes are coming back into the bays, truly, and if banning TBT on small leisure craft was the reason I'll go along with it. It is far more likely that control of water pollution and industrial runoff/dumping is the real reason. The Thames in England is a shinning example of the results of these controls.

Until the TBT is gone from all the commercial and naval and government vessels, I refuse to be the victim of a token gesture.
If you think huge numbers of leisure craft are the real problem, why don't you REALLY make a difference? Get legislation passed that has all leisure craft that haven't been out their slips or off their moorings for 12 months required to get out of the water and stored on the hard. The rest of us could use TBT like all the govt. vessels and it wouldn't even be noticed.

All I'm saying is, if there's REALLY a problem, then REALLY fix it. Don't just piss in the wind and get a nice warm feeling while it's blowing back on you.

[S/V Antares]

I was shaking my head when the ban went into effect. The paint folks really struggled to get anything close to the results they were getting with organotins. They appeared to change quite a lot from year to year. We would get a a carpet one year and a forest the next. I believe , like most industries, that they have finally made some very significant steps and I am now getting at least 2 and perhaps 3 years on a bottom job with an ocasional scrub. I just wonder if what they came up with is just not banned yet.

[fstbttms]

Originally Posted by Wotname

Is it really a necessary part of boat maintenance?

I would have thought it just a cheaper and easier solution than say hauling out and cleaning down on the hard and collecting the residue (assuming the same frequency of in water cleaning).

Surely cleaning by hauling out would be a better practice enviromentally wise, just happens it would be dearer and more inconvenient.

Please note I am not advocating this practice, just pointing out the logic of what can be considered best practice and /or necessary boat maintenance.

OK, let me rephrase- "hull cleaning is a necessary part of boat maintenance". However, in the Bay Area for instance, approximately 20,000 boats live in the water year 'round. Those boats are cleaned usually 4-6 times per year, meaning there are between 80,000-120,000 in-water hull cleanings annually (that is actually a conservative estimate, considering many race boats are cleaned 10 or 15 times per year). It would be physically impossible for the existing yards in the Bay Area to handle the number of haulouts required. If they could do it, that's all they would do, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Not to mention the attendant cost and inconvenience to the boat owner. In Southern California, the numbers are even more dramatic, as virtually all boats are cleaned a minimum of 12-15 times per year.

So yes, I believe that in-water hull cleaning is a necessary part of boat maintenance. The real answer is, of course, to ban toxins from anti fouling paints, if indeed, these toxins are actually a problem. This has proven to be the case for tin, I don't believe it has been proven for copper.

[bruce smith]

Originally Posted by fstbttms

OK, accepted. But you have an agenda. Let's hear from a few boat owners echoing your sentiments about cleaning frequencies who aren't pimping for the devil paint (and by that I mean; who still use copper-based paint.)

Wrong again, I have no agenda , nor ,am I pimping paint.
It is YOU, who make your living through junky bottom paint.

[fstbttms]

Originally Posted by VirtualVagabond

I don't give a rat's about so called morality. It's total BS imposed by a few on the many, excluding themselves, and using guilt and society as the driver.
What saddens me is the fact that huge numbers of otherwise intellegent people get sucked in and become the idiot drum beaters.Having said that, I care about the environment enormously. I just refuse to get sucked into stupidly looking like I'm making a difference shuffling deck chairs on the Titanic.

Do you also pur your used motor down the storm drain? Why not? Your doing it certainly won't have a significant impact on the environment. Since doing the right thing on a personal level apparently means nothing to you and is only for "the idiot drum beaters", why not pollute all you want?

[skipgundlach]

Originally Posted by VirtualVagabond

I don't give a rat's about so called morality. It's total BS imposed by a few on the many, excluding themselves, and using guilt and society as the driver.
What saddens me is the fact that huge numbers of otherwise intellegent people get sucked in and become the idiot drum beaters.
The mere fact that posters have the arrogance and self righteousness to say... "where are your morals?", begs the question... "where are your brains?"

Having said that, I care about the environment enormously. I just refuse to get sucked into stupidly looking like I'm making a difference shuffling deck chairs on the Titanic.

I'm delighted that all the little fishes are coming back into the bays, truly, and if banning TBT on small leisure craft was the reason I'll go along with it. It is far more likely that control of water pollution and industrial runoff/dumping is the real reason. The Thames in England is a shinning example of the results of these controls.

Until the TBT is gone from all the commercial and naval and government vessels, I refuse to be the victim of a token gesture.
If you think huge numbers of leisure craft are the real problem, why don't you REALLY make a difference? Get legislation passed that has all leisure craft that haven't been out their slips or off their moorings for 12 months required to get out of the water and stored on the hard. The rest of us could use TBT like all the govt. vessels and it wouldn't even be noticed.

All I'm saying is, if there's REALLY a problem, then REALLY fix it. Don't just piss in the wind and get a nice warm feeling while it's blowing back on you.

Hear, Hear (accompanied by desk and walking stick thumps)!

That said, we still use the ineffective stuff, and anectdotally (our boat) can tell you that in some waters we've visted (Saint Simons Island in particular, but other east coast places as well), it would be nearly a daily chore to clean if we wanted not to have to scrub it. Here in the Bahamas, weekly would be good, but we rarely do it that frequently, which means (for us) intentionally grounding the boat, donning wetsuits and sticking the hookah mouthpieces in, and going at it with brushes and the very occasional scraper, as often as we can. It takes an entire afternoon with two of us to get it down to bottom paint, which, we're thankful, DOES ablate.

I wish there were a better solution (pardon the expression), but as others have expressed, the technology seems to be struggling to come up with something which actually DOES work for more than just a small while...

L8R

Skip

[bljones]

Anybody want some cheese with their whine?

From what I have read here, there are ONLY three arguments in favour of TBT bottom paint:
1. It's cheap.
2. If the big ships can do it, why can't I, it's not fair!
3. Nothing else works as well and I don't like to scrub.
Would you accept this kinda crap from your kids?

*Puts on belligerent dickhead hat*
Rebuttal to argument 1: If you can't afford the paint, you should have bought a smaller boat... and really, listening to guys on 40 foot boats lounging around the caribbean bitch about spending $1000 on paint and haulout every two to three years is a little rich while i sit here and contemplate the snow falling outside.
Besides, if the new stuff doesn't work, why are you putting it on anyway? Therefore the cost is moot.

Rebuttal to argument 2: Don't make me pull this car over. Again, just so we're clear, this is the argument coming from grown men successful enough to cruise on 40 foot boats. C'mon.

Rebuttal to argument 3:If you were living on dirt, you'd have to mow the lawn, pull the weeds, trim the walks, prune the hedges... weekly.
Seems to me that occcasionally scrubbing the hull is just part of the cost of cruising- nautical lawnmowing. if that task is too onerous for some of you, feel free to come north, where you can enjoy a little persective by shovelling the snow off my sidewalks...again.
Some here are complaining about needing to go snorkeling, with a brush in the Bahamas every couple of weeks. I'll happily trade you.

For those of you who think that Fastbttms has an agenda and makes money off poor quality inferior bottom paint and this is all some sort of conspiracy cooked up by bottom-diving lobbyists (as opposed to bottom-dwelling legislators) you're dead wrong. he's making money on sailors too lazy or self-important to dive on their own hulls, just as landscapers make money on people too lazy to mow their own lawns.

*removes belligerent dickhead hat*

Thanks for your time.

[capn_billl]

Somebody please invent a better way. This is a problem that has existed since Columbus. Something shiny and slippery that barnacles can't stick to would be a good start.

[bruce smith]

34' boat, wood, built for $12,000.

[Bash]

Originally Posted by bljones

Rebuttal to argument 2: Don't make me pull this car over. Again, just so we're clear, this is the argument coming from grown men successful enough to cruise on 40 foot boats. C'mon.

Those are some crisp arguments, and they call to mind Wendell Berry's assertion that the environmental crisis is ultimately a crisis of character.

[hummingway]

Originally Posted by capn_billl

Somebody please invent a better way. This is a problem that has existed since Columbus. Something shiny and slippery that barnacles can't stick to would be a good start.

Well, the British Navy did a lot of work with copper sheathing of their boats. Copper sheathing - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia I suspect that, to some degree, the advent of toxic bottom paints seemed the answer and other work may have stopped at some point. IIRC Slocum mentions copper sheathing at some point in his writings?

In areas where it rains a lot roofs of wooden shingles will support a healthy growth of moss. One way that has been dealt with is to use zinc flashing at the roof peak. How about zinc embedded at the the water line of GRP boats? Zinc at the leading and top edges of the rudder? Some mix of zinc and iron to prevent electrolysis.

[s/v 'Faith']

Very good.

Originally Posted by VirtualVagabond

I don't give a rat's about so called morality. It's total BS imposed by a few on the many, excluding themselves, and using guilt and society as the driver.
What saddens me is the fact that huge numbers of otherwise intellegent people get sucked in and become the idiot drum beaters.
The mere fact that posters have the arrogance and self righteousness to say... "where are your morals?", begs the question... "where are your brains?"

Having said that, I care about the environment enormously. I just refuse to get sucked into stupidly looking like I'm making a difference shuffling deck chairs on the Titanic.

I'm delighted that all the little fishes are coming back into the bays, truly, and if banning TBT on small leisure craft was the reason I'll go along with it. It is far more likely that control of water pollution and industrial runoff/dumping is the real reason. The Thames in England is a shinning example of the results of these controls.

Until the TBT is gone from all the commercial and naval and government vessels, I refuse to be the victim of a token gesture.
If you think huge numbers of leisure craft are the real problem, why don't you REALLY make a difference? Get legislation passed that has all leisure craft that haven't been out their slips or off their moorings for 12 months required to get out of the water and stored on the hard. The rest of us could use TBT like all the govt. vessels and it wouldn't even be noticed.

All I'm saying is, if there's REALLY a problem, then REALLY fix it. Don't just piss in the wind and get a nice warm feeling while it's blowing back on you.

[senormechanico]

The problem with zinc at the waterline vs. roof peak is that you don't have gravity helping the water down the surface of the boat like you do on a roof peak.

[swagman]

Originally Posted by capn_billl

Somebody please invent a better way. This is a problem that has existed since Columbus. Something shiny and slippery that barnacles can't stick to would be a good start.

The top of my head might work!

Seriously, I do not think anyone wants to harm the environment but its surely all got to be put into perspective.

One 300 foot super tanker has a 35,000 square metre bottom. A 30 foot yacht has 30. The tanker is OK. The yottie banned. Can some one work that out for me?

It's a bit like banning direct discharge of our yachts toilet into the sea, and still allowing the pumping of thousands of gallons of sewage from cities every day. It is one rule for one grouping, another rule for others.

Could it just be the fact that most sailors are regular law abiding reasonable people? Perhaps a group of people with no influence? Perhaps a group that others who know nithing about sailing see as elite?

Does easy target comes to mind?

Unlike the commerical shipping lines - or municipalty utilities.

So if I got the chance to use it would I?

Not telling.

But it might be one way a small guy can kick back at the hypocrisy of it all.

JOHN

[hummingway]

Originally Posted by swagman

One 300 foot super tanker has a 35,000 square metre bottom. A 30 foot yacht has 30. The tanker is OK. The yottie banned. Can some one work that out for me?

JOHN

What is the impact on the world of bottom growth on your vessels vs the super tanker? What does it take to clean your bottom vs the super tanker? How many tankers are moored at your location? How many pleasure craft?