Hi Trisha -
Good luck. Quite a mouthful you've bitten off!
Background on my boat: Mine is a 40' (LOA)/28.8' (LWL) cut-out
full keel monohull. It displaces about 20,000 lbs. I keep my boat in the
water all year. It generally stays in the Mid-Atlantic states - in brackish
water. The bottom is painted with 2 coats hard copper antifouling
paint overcoated with 2 coats of ablative antifouling paint. The sides of the boat are painted with Awlgrip - so no hard scrubbing/polishing/waxing is needed. Topsides are fiberglass/gelcoat. Insides above the
cabin sole are mahogany - with no
fiberglass showing. Below the
cabin sole the
fiberglass bilge is painted. There's a pan under the
engine that catches crankcase oil/diesel
fuel drips.
TL/DR:
I don't have many 'challenges' to cleaning the hull (inside or out) of my boat. I do the
work myself, and the modest costs involve only, for the most part, household cleansers and
equipment. I do have the boat hauled out once a year to have the bottom cleaned for about $200.
Cleaning:
Bottom cleaning depends largely on how often I take the boat out. With ablative paint the more often I take the boat out the fewer times I have to clean the bottom. On average - I'd say that I use a bristle brush on a long (bent) handle to wipe off skum about twice a year. I haul the boat out every 18 - 24 months to have the bottom pressure washed and repainted. Hauling the boat out just to have it pressure washed would run about $200. If I do that - I'll do it once in the early spring.
Sides: No need for cleaning except for the occasional hosing down if it has been sitting a while.
Topsides: Other than touch-ups through the summer I generally give the topsides a good scrubbing and re-waxing in the spring. I do the
work myself. If the
gelcoat is starting to dull I'll use 3M Perfect-It polishing compound before waxing. I'll only mention the brightwork once to say that I'm not going to talk about it. Discussing brightwork would be another entire research
project.
Insides: The mahogany bulkheads and ceilings don't usually need much cleaning - just dusting and perhaps some furnature waxing (
e.g., Pledge and a dustcloth). Mold is not much of a problem where I am - and if it does become a problem it's usually an indication of another problem (
e.g., leaking decks,
food storage,
etc.). When that happens cleaning the mold (with a chlorine bleach cleaner) isn't nearly as much of a challenge as finding and fixing the cause of the mold. The
bilge has (so far) stayed pretty clean thanks to the
engine pan.
Obiter dicta
Organization: There are lots of ways to segregate/categorize the data that you may recieve; dispacement vs planing hulls, monohulls vs multihulls, 'large' vs 'small'
boats, cruisers vs day-sailors,
etc. Once you get a bit farther along you may want to focus your efforts onto only a few of those categories. Also - once you do, you may want to set up additional posts that include a
poll (or polls) which will make responding a lot easier for us.
Other sources: You may also want to post your question(s) to other
forums. Those that come immediately to mind are:
Sailing Anarchy
SailNet , and
YBW Forum (mainly U.K. sailors).
Other than boat owners - you may want to look at the challenges that
marinas face in offering cleaning services and/or allowing
DIY cleaning by owners. I'd start by looking at various state marina
regulations and state 'Clean Marina' programs.
Presentation: If you plan to present your findings visually, I suggest that you look at
Edward Tufte's books - especially his first, "
The Visual Display of Quantitative Information" and it's follow-up "
Envisioning Information." If you keep to text, another useful book is the
classic, "
How to Lie with Statistics" (which I believe should be on everyone's 'must read' list).
Finally, with regard to the question about how many responses are needed to draw any kind of supportable conclusions I'll leave you with what my old professor told me; "Samples are like potato chips; you don't know if you have enough until you've already had too many."
Hull Cleaning Challenges – What’s the Real Cost & Time Involved?
Linear Mode
Recent Discussions