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Old 11-04-2021, 05:27 AM   #30
O C Diver
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City: Fort Myers, FL... Summers in the Great Lakes
Vessel Name: Slow Hand
Vessel Model: Cherubini Independence 45
Join Date: Dec 2010
Posts: 12,834
Ok, Prop Speed works if your boat goes fast enough to throw the barnacles off or a diver scrubs them off. It's of little value if you don't use your boat or have a diver scrub it. Simply, it doesn't have chemicals that repel growth.

My experience with 2 boats;
On my charter boat it worked great. The boat cruises at 15 knots and would be run frequently to throw the small forming barnacles off. The propeller was turning 1,400 RPM which kept it clean. The stainless steel skeg and rudder were also clean.

The trawler is very different. It cruises around 6 to 7 knots. The water flow (speed) isn't fast enough to throw the barnacles off the skeg, stern bearing holder, and external water strainer (the rudder is fiberglass). The propeller turns 600 RPM, so it stays mostly clean. The prop nuts, shaft and anode also get some growth. By far the worst is the stern bearing holder which sees the least water flow.

By far the best solution for me was Pacifica Plus bottom bottom paint. The first year it was perfect where it stuck. The paint doesn't adhere well to clean metal. Last year I did an experiment and primed all the metal with the spray zinc antifouling (Barnacle Buster I think) and then put Pacifica Plus over it. That combination was perfect. I lost paint in a few spots where something may have hit it, but everything else including the stern bearing holder was clean. We sandblasted everything back down to bare metal and repeated the process again at my annual haulout. It might have been good for another year, but materials are cheap and the risk isn't worth it.

https://www.interlux.com/en/us/boat-.../pacifica-plus

Ted
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