Vinyl wrap under the water line - anti-fouling

[senormechanico]

Maybe we just need ultraviolet bottom paint!

[Dave_S]

There was some at the show. They had sample 1" squares of it.

I could easily remove large pieces of the outer skin with my finger nail. He assured me that it had different properties when submerged and that I wouldn't be able to when it was wet and should be able to beach my boat a number of times so long as I didn't run onto the beach.

I took a couple of samples home and tried it underwater with the same result.

[Tamps]

This looks like another antifoul wrap option, I will email the supplier and invite the to the discussion.

https://www.innovativemarinecoatings.../renolit-seal/

[IMC]

Hi all. I may be able to help a little bit with this. We are a marine vinyl wrap company in Sydney and were importing one of these products. After 18 months of answering very keen questions from many curious customers the outcome was always the same...that it was just simply too expensive. So we dropped it. Great technology, just not economical. Also, if there are any issues with the joins, the fix is not simple as it is an underwater job or the boat has to be lifted.

For example, I did my own Adams 10 yacht (33ft) when we brought in the first batch of product. The material alone cost $6k, add slipping, soda blasting, and labour for install and the cost is up over $10k. A 50ft yacht was in the order of $25k, and as the product is sold by the square meter and that is where a lot of the cost lies, a powerboat even more as it generally has more surface area underwater.

However, even if the product was free, in the example of my yacht you are still looking at around 3x the cost of what a normal antifoul costs me.

But...., there is always one.... The one we imported really did seem to work well. It has been on my yacht since March 2018 and mainly ignored. The diver has been over it once and everything that has found a way to grow on it just fell off. Except where some barnacles had found a foothold through joins. Since then they updated the join sealing tech.

Hope this helps!
Angus

[IMC]

Originally Posted by Dave_S

There was some at the show. They had sample 1" squares of it.

I could easily remove large pieces of the outer skin with my finger nail. He assured me that it had different properties when submerged and that I wouldn't be able to when it was wet and should be able to beach my boat a number of times so long as I didn't run onto the beach.

I took a couple of samples home and tried it underwater with the same result.

Hi Dave,
Yes, the material we had could have the silicone layer quite easily damaged by something sharp as well. There is a topper coat which could cover these...but out of the water.
The material was rated for 40kts due to higher speed impacts with waves causing delamination. Also it was not recommended for boats going up on trailers. I would suggest staying away from all abrasion and don't think it would like going up on the beach much.