Bottom Paint recommendation

[Seevee]

If you are having you bottom cleaned every other week, ablative paint will be worn away in short order.

Rich,


Well, I have been in the past, otherwise I just would be barnacled up. I would absolutely love it if the ablative wouldn't need bottom cleaning... or at least way less than I'm doing now.



Can I assume there's no downside in painting the ablative over the hard paint? When the ablative wears off, the old color will show.


Thx for the comments.

 

[Seevee]

Seevee
My family has owned a boatyard in Marthas Vineyard for 60 years they are currently hauling and launching over 400 boats per year. They use ablative bottom paints unless an owner requests something else. Their customer base is sail and power, wood and glass, up to about about 60 feet.

I ran 3 big yards on the Chesapeake. Our preferred paint was Pettit and used ablative almost exclusively.

On my own boats (sail and power) I have been used Pettit ablative for 25+ years. For 20 years,we were exclusively on the Chesapeake. The past 6 years we have been going south every winter. For two winters we sat 2 months in Cocoa FL and also one of those years got stuck in Marathon for a month. Never had a diver clean the bottom in FL but twice had the propeller cleaned. The past few summers we have spent a month or more on a mooring in Martha's Vineyard. So far in the past 25 years we have never hired a diver to clean the bottom.

In our case, we are "full time cruisers" so the boat is in the water year round. We run the boat a lot more than most, and that certainly helps keep the bottom and prop clean. Pettit Ultima SR 60 has been an excellent paint for our cruising style.

We use the same Pettit ablative paint on the thruster prop and tunnel. We have not found the ablative to wear off in the tunnel, but we do repaint the thruster prop and tunnel on our annual haul out anyway when we touch up the bottom. Others may have a different experience with ablative on thrusters. We use thruster so seldom that the brushes have gotten stuck from lack of use.

Tadhana,


Wow, that's quite a testimonial with great experience. That alone would sway me into using the ablative.



Doing way less or even eliminating bottom cleaning would be great.


Thx

 

[Seevee]

One more question:


Would ablative be a good choice for a prop and thruster props?


I'm leaning strongly toward the Pettit Hydrocoat SR for the next bottom job but wondering if it would work well on props.

 

[tadhana]

One more question:


Would ablative be a good choice for a prop and thruster props?


I'm leaning strongly toward the Pettit Hydrocoat SR for the next bottom job but wondering if it would work well on props.

I am not sure if Hydrocoat would work well on the thruster propeller and the tube. It is quite a soft pint. I think a call t Pettit is the next thing. The thruster can certainly be an area of high water flow and therefor rapid ablation. We have not had any trouble with Ultima SR ablating too quickly there in the thruster tube. But again it all depends upon how you use it.

Last summer our thruster (11 years full time cruising) was, according to VETUS ,giving all the signs of worn brushes. It is a bit of a hassle to get to it up under the island berth so I put off doing anything all summer. The first step in the service was to measure the the brushes. They are 127mm when new, When worn to 12 mm they should be replaced. After 11 years ours were worn to 169 mm. That right, 1mm wear in 11 years. The brushes were stuck in their holders due to lack of use. Vetus's instructions to us is to use the damn thing. My point is we may not see much ablation, only because the thruster is never used. If we used it we might expect more paint wear?

 

[Mark P]

Here is a picture of new Pettit paint on bottom and outdrive with prop speed on the props. Will post again in another year and see what she looks like when I haul her out for the annual service.

 

[Mark P]

Of course, I need to hit the upload button ?

 

[rgano]

One more question:


Would ablative be a good choice for a prop and thruster props?


I'm leaning strongly toward the Pettit Hydrocoat SR for the next bottom job but wondering if it would work well on props.

On my trawler, I always leaned toward a hard paint on my propellers - two coats over two coats of epoxy barrier coat after running a 50-grit disk over the bare metal of the prop. On this faster lift-kept boat with the prop spinning 50% faster, I went naked. However, a few months back because I have been having the keep the boat in the water for over a year, I had the boat hauled an just had the yard throw on ablative all the way around including thruster and prop. I'll have more to say about that in a week or two when the on-going repairs are complete and the boat once more sleeps out of the water and I can see the bottom.