Test new kind of antifouling, silicone based

[Tupaia]

For props I have had good experience with Prop-Shield.comÂ*Â* -Â*Â* Welcome to the online store & guide to PROPSHIELD Antifouling Grease it is an antifouling grease typically lasts 3-6 months but can be applied underwater (VERY MESSY), but it works. There is virtually no prep required, apart from cleaning. Much cheaper and IMO much more effective than PropSpeed.


Do NOT get it near anything white, gel coat, paintwork as the stains are near impossible to remove.

[GRIT]

Originally Posted by Al Walker

Yep, that's the stuff Dave. There's not many are willing to make the mindset change needed to move to a silicon foul release, but I'm finding the odd one or two more open minded now. We've been using it for 4 years now, and I wouldn't go back to antifoul now. I'll drop you a PM later on, we made mistakes first time round, you might as well know what they were so you can avoid them.

Any chance this can be shared in the thread?

Cheers.
Paul.

[Dave_S]

I went to the Sanctuary Cove Boat Show and met Neil, the agent here for the SeaCoat V10X.

After a couple of years of procrastination I'm going ahead. I've spoken to a number of people who have been involved or who have used it and all say the manufacturers claims are at least honest and in some cases under sell the product (thank you). I was given a sample plate and I'm impressed with it.

There is an additive coming that will offer some antifoul in the coating without causing damage to the environment and without detriment to the performance of the product, it is due very shortly.

If anyone is interested, I'd be happy to work together to get discounts offered on the product but also on the preparation and application.

It is AU$1,200 per 25sqm so not cheap but 10years life span. $125.00 discount for 4 kits, more for more, my boat needs 2 kits. We could probably safe on lift out, prep and application too. A big saving might come from no waste, i.e. my boat will actually on use about 40sqm so if we work it out correctly we can minimise waste and save. So if interested give me a shout, I'm looking at July/August in Brisbane/GoldCoast.

[fstbttms]

Originally Posted by Dave_S

There is an additive coming that will offer some antifoul in the coating without causing damage to the environment and without detriment to the performance of the product...

Do you have any further details about this additive? A link maybe?

[Dave_S]

Originally Posted by fstbttms

Do you have any further details about this additive? A link maybe?

No, the impression I got was it is not really an antifoul but more of a delay, targeted for shelled growth, that is for use in warmer waters. The intention, I believe, is to extend the duration between cleaning if you are not moving around. It isn't released yet so I expect they will be more open when it is available.

I'm not sure how it can last on a hard surface over 10 years but his advice was to wait for it. No harm in waiting a bit.

[propmaster]

About the Seaspeed silicone, an institution in the US called reclamation did a test on it and the results were pretty bad, all the hard silicone coatings showed bad results. The soft silicones worked pretty well but there is a problem with their durability, some data I found about the Intersleek 1100SR coating says it has a tensile strength of less than 1 MPa which I hope is fictitious because I can't understand how International sells this for 800$/gal + if it can get damaged so easily, has anyone used Intersleek 1100SR to comment on this issue, how easily does it gets damaged? I know they have applied it to thousands of ships so there must be something I'm missing about it's durability.

[Tornadosailing]

Spent a fortune doing Magic Antifouling (which you can no longer buy BTW) and can't wait to get it off my boat. I saw Brian from delos on the dock the other day and he seemed pretty happy with the results on his boat. Maybe there was a product consistency issue which wouldn't surprise me with an essentially home brewed antifouling.

My experience is as follows.

Extremely hard to install. The product skins over in the pan so fast that you can't even fully roll it out before having to dip the roller again just to keep it stirred in the pan. When I had to open a new can of paint I also had to throw away the roller cover and change pans because it dried too much.

I was encouraged by the result before we dipped. The finish was smooth and quite slick when wet.

It does nothing for soft growth. Hard growth isn't too bad. Some small barnacles that pop off pretty easily, but it will grow a several inches long green beard in just a couple weeks.

It's super brittle. If anything touches the bottom of the boat, plan on it ripping off a large section of paint. If you encounter something that you expect to put a scratch in the paint, such as overrunning your mooring ball in a wind vs current situation, plan on an inch wide path in the paint.

The plan was for this to be a 5 year coating. It's been on the boat for 18 months. I'm going to put up with it until hurricane season next year and then it's coming off.

[propmaster]

Originally Posted by Tornadosailing

Spent a fortune doing Magic Antifouling (which you can no longer buy BTW) and can't wait to get it off my boat. I saw Brian from delos on the dock the other day and he seemed pretty happy with the results on his boat. Maybe there was a product consistency issue which wouldn't surprise me with an essentially home brewed antifouling.

My experience is as follows.

Extremely hard to install. The product skins over in the pan so fast that you can't even fully roll it out before having to dip the roller again just to keep it stirred in the pan. When I had to open a new can of paint I also had to throw away the roller cover and change pans because it dried too much.

I was encouraged by the result before we dipped. The finish was smooth and quite slick when wet.

It does nothing for soft growth. Hard growth isn't too bad. Some small barnacles that pop off pretty easily, but it will grow a several inches long green beard in just a couple weeks.

It's super brittle. If anything touches the bottom of the boat, plan on it ripping off a large section of paint. If you encounter something that you expect to put a scratch in the paint, such as overrunning your mooring ball in a wind vs current situation, plan on an inch wide path in the paint.

The plan was for this to be a 5 year coating. It's been on the boat for 18 months. I'm going to put up with it until hurricane season next year and then it's coming off.

Sorry to hear this, if this coating is so brittle how did you launch your boat, wouldn't lift slings, bunk slides or support pads rip through this coating?

[Al Walker]

Originally Posted by propmaster

About the Seaspeed silicone, an institution in the US called reclamation did a test on it and the results were pretty bad, all the hard silicone coatings showed bad results. The soft silicones worked pretty well but there is a problem with their durability, some data I found about the Intersleek 1100SR coating says it has a tensile strength of less than 1 MPa which I hope is fictitious because I can't understand how International sells this for 800$/gal + if it can get damaged so easily, has anyone used Intersleek 1100SR to comment on this issue, how easily does it gets damaged? I know they have applied it to thousands of ships so there must be something I'm missing about it's durability.

Can you post a link to this? Having used both soft and hard silicone coatings, it doesn't tie in with my experience.

Thanks

[fstbttms]

Originally Posted by Al Walker

Can you post a link to this?

https://www.usbr.gov/research/projec...il.cfm?id=7095

[propmaster]

Originally Posted by Al Walker

Can you post a link to this? Having used both soft and hard silicone coatings, it doesn't tie in with my experience.

Thanks

The takeaway of the bureau of reclamation papers is: the hard fouling release coatings have unacceptable fouling resistance but are durable enough, the soft fouling release coatings have acceptable fouling resistance but are not durable enough, the bureau of reclamation took on a partnership agreement in order to develop a soft durable coating but failed or just abandoned the project, fuji film stopped producing anything related to fouling release coatings afterward. I remember their target goal was achieving around 5-5.5 MPa tensile strength, the top of the art commercial coating at the time was under 2.5 MPa.

One paper that cites the tensile strength of Intersleek 1100SR is mentioning a value of under 1 MPa but maybe the real value is close to 1.5 MPa? I really have no idea how they're selling it by the tons to shipping companies if it's so brittle, their "fluoropolymer technology" is also bogus since the surface energy limit for fouling resistance is anything lower than the one that pure silicone has so fluorosilicone having even lower surface energy than silicone doesn't give much to fouling resistance, I don't know what their secret is for selling so much of this, not to mention they list a price of 800-850$ per gallon when selling to individuals, there's something I'm missing here.

Maybe the actual performance is better than the field tests various institutes do, care to share which hard and soft silicones have you used and what is your experience with them, do you clean them with a water jet often?

[JustMurph]

You can now buy silicone foul release wraps too. There is a 60' motor cruiser that's just been done with that at the yard I'm hauled at at the moment. They say the expected life is 5 years. The big upside is that it will be easier to remove than the paints. Well....should be.

[propmaster]

Originally Posted by JustMurph

You can now buy silicone foul release wraps too. There is a 60' motor cruiser that's just been done with that at the yard I'm hauled at at the moment. They say the expected life is 5 years. The big upside is that it will be easier to remove than the paints. Well....should be.

Hello, they also tested a very promising fouling release film, the results were worse than the hard coatings so they stopped testing it.

"Sharkskin, a micro/nano texturing polymeric film, (said to mimic shark skin)was evaluated. It was removed from testing in April 2018 due to poor performance (Figure 7)."

[JustMurph]

It must be a different product to this one, which is very slick.

[Al Walker]

The first coating we used was Aquacote - a soft silicone which I understand is no longer available. It was on the boat for 3 years, worked OK for about 18 months then the coating deteriorated very quickly. I don't know if it is the same for all soft silicones, but this one was a real pain to apply. Although we had it applied professionally, I suspect there were issues around the application which contributed to the rapid deterioration. Release performance was good for the first year, then got steadily worse, but I put this down to the surface deterioration.

We are now using Seaspeed VX10 - a hard silicone. I notice that this isn't the same product name mentioned in the report, so there may be a change in the composition of the product - I don't know. Anyway, this coating has been on now for 2 years. Again, we had this applied professionally, and it was far easier than applying the soft silicone. Performance wise, it is no better or worse than the soft coating was when new, but the performance has not deteriorated with time. Durability wise, I'm seeing a little bit of wear on the waterline at the bows, otherwise, no issues.

Given that it is a foul release and not an antifoul, if you don't use the boat, foul does build up, and once it has built up a bit, it is harder to remove by boat movement alone. The higher the boat speed, the better the cleaning action, I have a cruising yacht and struggle to maintain higher speeds. However, when we are away for a few months and moving most days, the hull remains pretty clean. We keep the boat in a high growth location (for NZ), and if we're not using her, I'll put her on the local drying grid and give her a wash off with a hose and a rag every few months. Takes me just over an hour, not unpleasant on a sunny day.

Looking at a study such as this is fine, and gives a great starting point, but it isn't the be all and end all. It was carried for a specific purpose under specific conditions. A boat is operating under different and varying conditions to those identified in the report.

The coating you put on your underwater surfaces is only one tool you use as part of your overall strategy for controlling growth on your hull. Antifoul keeps growth at bay by poisoning. We chose to use foul release so as not to release poisons (even miniscule amounts) into the water. Since we don't have a boat which is consistently fast enough to dislodge growth by movement alone, we also use ultrasound (a good unit with well placed transducers) to help control the establishment of weeds and shelly growth. The system works pretty well for us in our situation, and I'm quite happy to give the boat a wash down every now and again to remove slime and some short furry growth.

Cost wise, this hard silicone we now have cost overall about twice what it would have cost us to put on a good conventional antifoul.

At the end of the day, each to their own. We have a system that works for us, other people have different systems that work for them. You just use the available tools to suit yourself.