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.