Haul Out Frequency

Shouldn't shifting one's boat between fresh and salt water help get rid of boat-bottom flora and fauna? That's possible in the San Francisco estuary.

markpierce said:

Shouldn't shifting one's boat between fresh and salt water help get rid of boat-bottom flora and fauna? That's possible in the San Francisco estuary.

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I have seen that to be extremely effective. Not particularly convenient, but effective.

fstbttms said:

I have seen that to be extremely effective. Not particularly convenient, but effective.

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But it a good excuse to travel from the Bay to the Delta and the reverse.

markpierce said:

But it a good excuse to travel from the Bay to the Delta and the reverse.

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Perhaps. But I suspect the fuel alone would far outweigh the cost of simply having a diver come to your slip and clean the hull.

Yes, I suppose the least expensive use of one's boat is to keep it at berth, not considering the engine(s) health.

markpierce said:

Yes, I suppose the least expensive use of one's boat is to keep it at berth, not considering the engine(s) health.

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Nice try, but that's not what I said.

Bottom Line - We Need to Keep the Bottom Fine!

There's a logo for ya fb!!

Good Luck... and thanks for your experienced input.

Art said:

Bottom Line - We Need to Keep the Bottom Fine!

There's a logo for ya fb!!

Good Luck... and thanks for your experienced input.

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Thanks. Don't quit your day job, but thanks.

Our first haul out was this morning. Interesting morning for sure! Had to zigzag around boats in tight quarters to get to the boat launch, then waited to see what the bottom looked like. Fuzzy for sure, but no blisters, no damage, and only some loose flaking paint sections to deal with. Phew!!!

The next couple days will be far from lazy...

If you want me to say publicly what I add to Trinidad SR bottom paint, I will right here.

I get Roundup concentrate and add 4 oz per gallon of paint. First i take the paint to a paint store and have them shake it right before I go to the haulout. Then I pour that into a plastic bucket and add the roundup. It turns milky for a few seconds as it mixes in but it mixes well in the oil based paint.

I wear long sleeves, cover my head and neck, wear a charcoal breather and roll away on my bottom. It's nasty stuff but it drys well in a few hours and stays in the paint. It won't come off into the water unless you are cleaning the bottom which really isn't necessary unless your boat sits at the dock.

Boats in Cabo San Lucas do this and they don't have a bottom cleaning service. They paint on 5 year intervals. These are fishing charter boats there so they stay busy.

If you've been to Cabo you know that your boat sitting in the water for two weeks and you'll probably need a cleaning. It's warm 80 degree water and full of life.

I also add cayenne pepper despite what was said above, it works but what happens to cayenne is it goes to the surface of the paint so after a few cleanings it's gone. This is an additive that if you are using a bottom cleaning service, you should ask him to use the lightest touch and not scrub just wipe.

I am new here but what I consistently see here is a man defending his livelihood as a diver. Thats fine but please don't denigrate stuff people do that, by personal experience, works. I for one will be using the above recipe when I next haul out.

If your bottom paint fails due to additives that aren't even remotely supposed to be added to paint...can't really expect the company to step up and help resolve your problem.

I would do some test panels before I did my boat just to verify "internet" recipes.

AussieCraig said:

I am new here but what I consistently see here is a man defending his livelihood as a diver.

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No, what you see here is an experienced marine industry professional who knows he's talking about. In almost 19 years and over 20,000 hulls cleaned, I've seen and heard just about every hairbrained anti fouling "magic bullet" there is. Pepper paint is as old as dust and equally effective at retarding growth. There is zero evidence to the contrary, anecdotes from boaters who have never cleaned a bottom in their lives notwithstanding. Again, if it was effective, it would be commercially available. Ask your local anti fouling paint sales rep why it isn't. He'll laugh at you.

As far as Roundup goes, it is an herbicide that is formulated to kill weeds by being absorbed through foliage. In addition, it is not a pre-emergence herbicide, meaning it is only effective against already growing plants. It does not stop new ones from developing. So not only is it not designed to kill the stuff that forms the basis of the fouling progression (algae and bacteria), it only works on plants that have already grown. No anti fouling benefit there. And let's not even get into how douchey it is to intentionally introduce a controversial herbicide that is intended for agriculture into our fragile marine environments. That's some real third-world thinking, right up there with using TbT-based paints.

The folks with the biggest interest in bottom paint is the folks that loose $50,000 a day in billings when the boat 700-1000ft long is hauled.

Sadly their paint is of little use for us as most of the boats travel constantly at good speed (12K to 20K) to help clean the bottom.

This is the worse I've seen on a ship despite infrequent bottom painting in the industry.

Well...all that 'science' notwithstanding perhaps we will just have to agree to disagree.

Anyone tried adding readily available Copper Sulphate to increase the copper % in the paint ?

AussieCraig said:

Well...all that 'science' notwithstanding...

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Yeah, that's cute.


Look, it's your dime. I'm not diving your your boat so I'm not gonna be real concerned if you screw up your bottom paint. I'm just telling you the facts. You can choose to believe them or not. But you not believing them doesn't make them untrue.

Thankyou ! Long arsed time since I have been accused of being cute!

Just to finish the photo sequence in post #69;

Why are you saying "screw up your bottom paint?" This is a proven formula used by hundreds of boats for decades.

This is exactly why I didn't want to post it in the first place. It's like cancer research. All the doctors say they can't cure cancer yet and keep requesting millions for more research, yet thousands of people are cured with herbs and natural cures.

You are going to believe whatever you choose and I totally understand. Some people feel warm and fuzzy staying in their box.

MurrayM said:

Just to finish the photo sequence in post #69;

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Nice looking vessel !

I clean my own bottoms and paint em too – cause... I Like It! Keeps Me Young!!

I have much agreement with fstbttms re boat-bottom paint as well as his cleaning processes. But, I also wonder (as everyone does – boat owners and manufacturers alike) is there maybe some “magic” boat bottom paint mixture that could greatly reduce the process of sea growth on bottoms? Without poisoning other sea life that is!

I wonder what effect of mixing some %age of Creosote (or similar fungus killing compound) into bottom paint would accomplish?? After all... wood rot (fungus, Serpula lacrymans) is a living organism which the ingredients of wood preservatives such as Creosote kill. Seeing as sea growth are also living organisms the logical conclusion is... ??? That said, no matter what is put onto boat/ship bottoms to help reduce or stop accumulation of sea growth the environmental impact must be negligible as an outcome. To have self cleaning boat bottom paint ingredients that cause severe sea life (fish, shell-fish, coral, algae – etc) degradation is not the answer at all; ecologic complications could topple the oceans’ fine balance of continued, prospering life forms. It would be far better for us all to hand-clean our boat bottoms many times a year than to ruin the ecological balance in earth’s waters. Heck – take your boat for a cruise twice a month and do WOT for 15 minutes – that works pretty well... or go diving or hire a diver to clean your bottom!

Quote: “Creosote is a wood preservative used for commercial purposes only; it has no registered residential uses. Creosote is obtained from high temperature distillation of coal tar (itself a mixture of hundreds of organic substances), and over 100 components in creosote have been identified. It is used as a fungicide, insecticide, miticide, and sporicide to protect wood and is applied by pressure methods to wood products, primarily utility poles and railroad ties”

Fairly quick read on Tributyltin...

TBT-based antifouling paints

http://www.ukmarinesac.org.uk/activities/ports/ph4_3_1.htm

Capthead said:

This is a proven formula used by hundreds of boats for decades.

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It's not proven by any means. Your own example cites a Mexican charter fishing fleet. A group of boats that are almost constantly under weigh. So do their bottoms stay clean because they used some weed killer in the paint or do they stay clean because they are on the move all the time?

As far as personal anecdotes go- if I had a dime for every time a boat owner told me, based on what he saw from the dock (because boat owners typically only actually lay eyes on their boat bottoms every few years), that his bottom was "in pretty good shape" or "not too bad", only to find a bottom that was very foul- I wouldn't have to clean boat bottoms any more. Most boat owners have very little idea what the true state of fouling is on their boats. So when someone who does not actually see his hull underwater tells me that using Roundup means his bottom does not need cleaning in Southern California (where his non-Roundup-using neighbors are being cleaned every 3-4 weeks), I take that for what it's worth.

The owner said before they used roundup they had to clean the bottoms. I know roundup only works on the plant growth and it works great.

Do a test panel. Paint one half with straight bottom paint, the other with roundup treated.

For me, it worked for a while until my bottom cleaning service cleaned it away. For a neighbor who sailed to the Marshall Islands via Hawaii, It worked remarkably well. His was actually a test boat. He was hauled and painted two coats of bottom paint on his hull in two days. The first day he used roundup. The second day he forgot to add it and my friend was helping him, came as he had painted the port stern 1/4 toward the bow. He asked if he added the roundup. He said he forgot and they added it to the paint and painted the remaining hull.

Before he left for Hawaii you could already see growth on that 1/4 port stern portion and nothing at all on the rest of the boat.

They made it to Hawaii and still nothing was growing. They stayed in Hawaii for two years and went to the Marshalls before hauling again.

It's nasty and not for everybody. But it works.

I shall deem this a pointless argument as both sides appear intractable. As has been stated the ecology must be protected at all costs however I doubt 1 in 100 people using 4oz of roundup per gallon of paint is going to cause damage. I am still curious as to whether upping the % of copper in the paint would be of any benefit...?

I don't see how Roundup could possibly work as a paint additive. It is a contact herbicide, the contact being in a liquid form. It is the liquid contact with the broadleaf that allows the absorption of Roundup into the plant. It is used in aquatic plant control but it does not persist long in a water environment (somewhere around 12-20 days), and this is at pretty high concentrations. As noted, it only works on already growing plants.

If mixed in a piant suspension, how is it released? After paint has dried, even ablative paint, how does it liquefy to come into contact with budding bottom life? If I used 5 gallons to paint my bottom, I have added 20 oz of Roundup according to the formula given. Even if all 20 oz liquefies on water contact, what is the concentration even when the boat is sitting in an enclosed marina? It cannot conceivably equal the concentration when sprayed directly on plants. With tidal and current flows, how does it even remain in the area of my boat?

On the business side-Monsanto's patent on glyphosate (the active Roundup ingredient) has expired, allowing it on the open market by other producers. If there were an alternative use that could have resulted in new or extended patent protection, you can believe that Monsanto would have discovered it, patented a different formulation and it would be available in every can of bottom paint sold at a hefty price premium.

Could it be - and I am not a chemist - that it doesnt kill the bottom goop but repels it instead ? I mean why does it stick to a boat bottom in the first place ? Why couldnt it just make the landing place unpalatable ? Same with the cayenne pepper ?

And now I am fermee in this discussion...thank you linesmen, thankyou ballboys...

Not only can't find any answers, can't even find where anyone asked the question. Which goes to the point of Monsanto not even considering it as usable in such a marine environment, even given an opportunity to extend patent protection. I did find a scientific paper from France where the effect of Roundup was tested in the situation of agricultural runoff into estuaries. It was study of the effects of Roundup on marine microbes, phytoplankton and the like. While having a difficult time at reading the scientific jargon, the interesting point from the conclusions, is that there was no mention of morbidity. The microbes studied did not die off, there were changes in microbial concentrations and activity and the like, but there was no mention that massive amounts of microbes were killed. I actually found that kind of interesting. There was no mention of any effect on estuarian plant life.