Not doing bottom paint. What can go wrong?

[Chotu]

Originally Posted by Leighpilot

Plenty of big catamarans with that kind of beam so I’m sure there are marinas equipped to haul them. Whether they’ll let you do your own anti fouling is another matter. Good luck

You’d be surprised. There are 5 marinas that can haul a 25ft beam between the Chesapeake and Canada.

And I definitely need DIY. Not paying $6000-$8000 for bottom paint that originally cost me like $400-$500 to apply.

It’s getting insane. These places adjust their prices based on what type of boat you have. Mind you, I have the same surface area below the waterline as a 35ft monohull. It’s way less painting than a 50ft or even 40ft mono but the price is 3x higher?

[Leighpilot]

Well maybe approach the yard with a request for a quote for “ cleaning the bottom x Sq feet and applying two coats of anti fouling ,total paint 3 gallons “. Once that’s done you can tell them it’s on a big cat.

I hate to mention this though as it can provoke outrage, but I had to give similar advice regarding buying light aircraft. Sure you might be able to afford a classic light twin but can you afford to operate it. The same goes for big boats. You can buy them cheap but keeping them sailing isn’t cheap. As you’re discovering now. And replacing rigging , engines , sails etc will also be hugely expensive. $8000 shouldn’t be a bill worth discussing for the owner of a 60ft cat. Heck it cost me $18000 to get my 33ft cat painted and antifouled and I know the yard grossly underquoted me. I was just lucky Craig honored his quoted. Maybe you’d be happier with a smaller cat ?

Sure a big cat is fun to sail and does wonders for your ego but if it’s bankrupting you , there’s no fun to be had.

[Fore and Aft]

Chotu there is more to it than the type of boat you have. The equipment needed to haul a 35-foot monohull is nothing compared to a big cat. Not to mention the amount of yard space you occupy. Then there is at least 200 feet of tape to mask your boat, paper to mask up if sprayed. Plus, the time needed to walk around your tennis court while working on it. Are any issues going to be found while hauled. You did mention being grounded recently.
I am with Leighpilot $8000 is a drop in the bucket for most big boat owners. Some of these big boat skippers don't mind showing me invoices and it's way out of my league. It's not the 1990s anymore where prices in the marine industry were more reasonable.
There's a reason the average sailor does not own a 50-foot cat or even a 50-foot monohull.
Cheers

[Chotu]

Originally Posted by Fore and Aft

Chotu there is more to it than the type of boat you have. The equipment needed to haul a 35-foot monohull is nothing compared to a big cat. Not to mention the amount of yard space you occupy. Then there is at least 200 feet of tape to mask your boat, paper to mask up if sprayed. Plus, the time needed to walk around your tennis court while working on it. Are any issues going to be found while hauled. You did mention being grounded recently.
I am with Leighpilot $8000 is a drop in the bucket for most big boat owners. Some of these big boat skippers don't mind showing me invoices and it's way out of my league. It's not the 1990s anymore where prices in the marine industry were more reasonable.
There's a reason the average sailor does not own a 50-foot cat or even a 50-foot monohull.
Cheers

Wrong. Completely wrong.

It doesn’t take a lot of equipment to haul a catamaran. All it takes is a trailer and a pick up truck actually. You don’t even need a travel lift. There are only two marinas that have been smart enough to figure this out so far.

Wow…. 200ft of tape to do the waterline taping? $14 of tape and 20 mins to put it on justifies $6000-$8000?

Nobody sprays bottom paint either. Where do you live? You roll it on.

It took me one afternoon to do my bottom paint on this boat.

I spent about $500 or $600 in paint and materials.

And grounded? Did you not read the thread that you are referencing to? You really, really don’t understand this boat apparently. I’m going to get grounded again tomorrow or the next day as soon as this weather goes by.

I don’t know what your issue is, but I don’t see why you are justifying $6000-$8000 for something that cost between $500 and $600 to do. What’s the point in that?

[Chotu]

Originally Posted by Leighpilot

Well maybe approach the yard with a request for a quote for “ cleaning the bottom x Sq feet and applying two coats of anti fouling ,total paint 3 gallons “. Once that’s done you can tell them it’s on a big cat.

I hate to mention this though as it can provoke outrage, but I had to give similar advice regarding buying light aircraft. Sure you might be able to afford a classic light twin but can you afford to operate it. The same goes for big boats. You can buy them cheap but keeping them sailing isn’t cheap. As you’re discovering now. And replacing rigging , engines , sails etc will also be hugely expensive. $8000 shouldn’t be a bill worth discussing for the owner of a 60ft cat. Heck it cost me $18000 to get my 33ft cat painted and antifouled and I know the yard grossly underquoted me. I was just lucky Craig honored his quoted. Maybe you’d be happier with a smaller cat ?

Sure a big cat is fun to sail and does wonders for your ego but if it’s bankrupting you , there’s no fun to be had.

Kind of curious how long you have been on the water to make a statement like that last one. You apparently don’t have the slightest idea why I own this boat.

How did your 33 foot cat feel in a gale? How about in 30 knots at anchor?

But that aside the rest of the post was pretty good. Sort of. Yeah I guess the owner of a 60 foot cat definitely wouldn’t care about an $8000 bill. Maybe. It would be hard to see how they accumulated all this money if they were consistently stupid enough to be paying 8-16x higher rates on everything than whatever it really costs. But I don’t know anyone that owns a 60 foot cat, nor are there any people on this forum that have one. That’s kind of beyond what you can operate easily as a single person or a couple.

But you were right. I should just approach based on square feet. That is really what it is. And that’s actually the part that’s most frustrating. They are not pricing it based on anything logical. They’re just trying to see how much they can take people for. That’s it. It’s very little bottom paint. Takes one afternoon and isn’t even a sanding project. It’s ablative. It’s the easiest thing ever. It’s a complete and utter rip off.

Wait. You paid $18,000 to have your 33 foot catamaran painted? Do you have any money at all left operating like this? Have to ask because that was a big mistake. You got ripped off. It cost me somewhere around $3000-$4000 to do the same to mine. Primer, sprayed the whole boat, nonskid deck and bottom paint. Took about a week to do the topsides and bottom paint because I started from raw fiberglass. Had to do primer on all of it first. Non skid took longer. Lots of taping.

I sure would hate to have you in charge of my accounting department though. Lol We’d be bankrupt in five minutes. How do you operate whatever your source of income is with an attitude like this toward expenses? Seriously. Or are you an employee? Or maybe a government worker? Where cost doesn’t concern you?

[bgallinger]

"It doesn’t take a lot of equipment to haul a catamaran. All it takes is a trailer and a pick up truck actually. You don’t even need a travel lift."

That settles it. I'm trading in my monohull for a big cat!

[Chotu]

Originally Posted by bgallinger

"It doesn’t take a lot of equipment to haul a catamaran. All it takes is a trailer and a pick up truck actually. You don’t even need a travel lift."

That settles it. I'm trading in my monohull for a big cat!

Don’t bother. Most marinas are not smart enough to have figured it out yet. There are only two of them on the East Coast of the United States that understand this.

This is how I moved my boat out of the boat shed originally when it first went in the water. (After trying and failing at all the Egyptian methods)

The same hydraulic trailer they use to haul a 30ft monohull works just fine.

Kind of hurts my head that people don’t understand this. It’s not that advanced of a concept

[smj]

Haul, block, launch and power wash for our 40’x25’ cat ranges between $850-$1050, depending where we go. Cost for 2 gallons of bottom paint and associated materials at retail, about $800.
Last time we hauled we had 2 coats of bottom paint on and were ready to slash less than 24 hours after we were set on the ground, I’m guessing for two people maybe 6 hours of labor.

[boatman61]

Chotu.. people have either got used too or, just were not around in the days before travel lifts when all sorts of contraptions were used to trolley out boats with a tractor.
One method was a flatbed trailer pushed down the slip then the mono was towed up and positioned over it, two scaffold poles were put into slots at each corner of the trailer and the boat was lashed up, the tractor would tow it out to its spot in the yard and we would jack it up for the keel blocks before gradually sliding out the trailer setting up the props as we went.
Long dead skills and improvisation.

[Chotu]

Originally Posted by smj

Haul, block, launch and power wash for our 40’x25’ cat ranges between $850-$1050, depending where we go. Cost for 2 gallons of bottom paint and associated materials at retail, about $800.
Last time we hauled we had 2 coats of bottom paint on and were ready to slash less than 24 hours after we were set on the ground, I’m guessing for two people maybe 6 hours of labor.

Exactly. Where are these other posts coming from?

I can’t imagine they have never done their own bottom paint.

[Chotu]

Originally Posted by boatman61

Chotu.. people have either got used too or, just were not around in the days before travel lifts when all sorts of contraptions were used to trolley out boats with a tractor.
One method was a flatbed trailer pushed down the slip then the mono was towed up and positioned over it, two scaffold poles were put into slots at each corner of the trailer and the boat was lashed up, the tractor would tow it out to its spot in the yard and we would jack it up for the keel blocks before gradually sliding out the trailer setting up the props as we went.
Long dead skills and improvisation.

I’ve seen that type of trailer you are talking about. I forget where. It may have only been in pictures, admittedly.

But a Catamaran really lends itself to being hauled out with a trailer. In fact it’s better on the boat than using a travelift because the travellift compresses the hulls inward and puts a load on the topsides. The hydraulic trailer puts the whole load on the main structural beams so it’s better in my opinion.

And it’s not like these aren’t in use actually. Up here in the north east USA, there are many, many people that use hydraulic boat trailers and a boat ramp to take their boat out of the water each season and store it in their yard at their house. I’m contacting these people now to see if I can haul out.

[Chotu]

Originally Posted by smj

Haul, block, launch and power wash for our 40’x25’ cat ranges between $850-$1050, depending where we go. Cost for 2 gallons of bottom paint and associated materials at retail, about $800.
Last time we hauled we had 2 coats of bottom paint on and were ready to slash less than 24 hours after we were set on the ground, I’m guessing for two people maybe 6 hours of labor.

Honestly, I should have went where you told me to go in the Carolinas. I was just too ready to get back home and after the huge financial loss in the outer banks, I was just looking to leave.

What I didn’t realize is that so many places now forbid you to do your bottom paint so they can charge $6000-8000.

Plenty of places where I have done this in the past are now on the new program where only they do it.

[fstbttms]

Originally Posted by Chotu

Nobody sprays bottom paint either. You roll it on.

OMG

[s/v Jedi]

But you got the Bahco pull scraper that I recently used to remove hundreds of barnacle bases with? Are your barnacles tougher than mine? How does hauling out remove the barnacles?

I thought there were beaches with tides where you can work on it every low tide?

[Chotu]

Originally Posted by s/v Jedi

But you got the Bahco pull scraper that I recently used to remove hundreds of barnacle bases with? Are your barnacles tougher than mine? How does hauling out remove the barnacles?

I thought there were beaches with tides where you can work on it every low tide?

Bases? No. Everything else? Yes.

I did not get a Bahco. I got the one at Ace hardware where I was located.

Mostly, that didn’t work because the fouling was tremendous. No bottom work on it since February in Tampa for a lot of reasons. I used a metal 5 in 1 painter’s tool which made quick work of everything but many of the bases.

I am under the impression I have to sand them off, so i would have to be on land. Maybe not?

Maybe the pull scraper will take the bases off? They are huge

Maybe I’m wrong and when I take another crack at it on the sandbar it won’t be so bad. I did it in the water.

I’m going to take another crack at it (pun?) on the sandbar. It was a weekend and too busy to do it when I arrived and I wanted to get started. So I did it in the water.

I’m trying to find back up plans basically.