Cleaning Inflatable Dinghy with Barnacles

[landonshaw]

I am trying to clean my dinghy of the barnacles that it has on it. The dinghy is either being towed or in a dinghy dock. It is never out of the water.

We are no on the hard and I have scrapped the hard surface of the dinghy and cleaned it with Up & Down. It has worked wonderful!

The soft tubes have been lightly scraped and under each barnacle it seems to have pulled off a little rubber. What can I use the clean the dinghy tubes with and should I worry about the removal of material.

Lastly, how do you keep it clean????

[barnakiel]

Branacle shells are made of calcium. Vinegar does the job because it is acidic. Stronger acids may damage the fabric.

If you keep the dink in the water full time perhaps give it some anti-foul?

[s/v 'Faith']

Vinegar with a splash of dish soap woks wonders. The dish soap just suspends the vinegar and helps break up the mess that breaking them off attracts.

I would visit a beach where I could flip the dink over and use sand to rub the vinegar into the bits of shell that did not want to let go. A good half wrotten bit of wood helps too.

[speciald@ocens.]

Any dilute acid solution will work as the Hypalon should not be affected by the acid. That's why workers wear rubber gloves when working with acids.

[GordMay]

Plastic Scraper

[landonshaw]

Is there something that I can repair where the plastic that was scraped off? Under the old barnacles?

[senormechanico]

Muriatic acid..Spray or slosh on, wait ten minutes and hose off. It dissolves the stuff into a goo similar to guacamole.


Steve B.

[landonshaw]

I went to the maine store to buy some muriatic acid and it ws 38%. Do you dilute it first? or pour on and then rinse off. As previously said it will not hurt the plastic?

Do you know of anything to fix the small parts where I scrapped off the barnacles from the tube? Seems like a very small coat of rubber came off as the barnacle came off. I may want to fix that before I pour the acid on, it may hurt what is left?

Any ideas.

[pacmaann2]

you can get 100% muriatic acid from a pool store for much cheaper then a marine store

[landonshaw]

Thank you I will look into that. What do they use it with pools for?

[Sailmonkey]

What are the tubes made of? Hypalon or PVC......either one of these tubes are usually made of several layers of rubber and nylon cloth, hypalon being far tougher. I would wory more about damaging the pvc, but in either case the acid should have no effect on the cloth below the outer coating of rubber.

[mike d.]

as far as fixing the material you pulled off you'd best to go to the orig. mfg and get their input. there is a rubber coating that is sold for the old material pvc or hypalon it is sold in quart cans i beleive just go on lie query it also i use ez on ez off to clean my dink rubber gloves a must. i use a spray bottle (NOT ON WINDY DAYS IT WILL GO DOWN YOUR LUNGS AND WILL BURN YOUR EYES AND SKIN) spray on leave a little while then scrub and rinse off

[landonshaw]

I ended up buying some dinghy rubber repair paint, not sure of the name, at the local marina, Grenada, painted it on and all looks good. I will start cleaning MUCH more often. Today going to a beach and use Up & Down on the bottom and rinse well. It has been a month in the water and is getting signs of green growth.

[Rex Delay]

If you are going to leave it in the water, clean and paint with dingy antifoulding. It lasts about a year.

[cap'n bob]

Others may not like this, but for ongoing maintenance in the water I use a large tarp, stretch it underneath the entire dinghy bringing it up all around....it forms an envelope underneath the dink. Then pour a gallon of bleach into that, go have a cpl of cool ones, remove the tarp and voila, your bottom is cleaned.