Fouling in the Med

I keep my boat in the Mediterranean, in a marina village that has brackish water. It has been very hot for a long time and the water is a shade of dark green, filled with fishes and other marine life. Its the latter thats causing me a problem.

I took my boat out on Monday and did the usual WOT 2700rpm and 18kn. Way down on Normal. I anchored and got my scuba gear out. The trim falls (stainless) had 2 inches of growth on them, the rudders and prop not as bad but still a lot there. The prop shaft was an extra 1.5 inches in diameter. Cleaned it all off and WOT 3200 rpm and 25kn. I should add that the boat was spotless four months ago.

Any ideas? I did look at ultrasonics but I can't use that as the hull is a sandwich construction. I did hear of a wax you can put on when the boat is out when back in the water. Has anybody tried this wax and does it work?

Sorry if I have missed a thread on this.

Greetings,
Mr. g. Do you have anti-foul paint on the bottom?

Yes, hard antifoam and the hull is clean so its working. Just the prop, shaft, rudders and trim tabs which weren't anti fouled that have the problem.

There are some proprietary coatings like Propspeed for props as well as some owner concoctions such as cold galvanizing sprays. But I have tried a few of them and in general after a season they are gone.


Nothing protects running gear the same way that bottom paint protects the fiberglass hull from marine critters.


So I just scrape the critters off every few months just like you did.



David

Warm water with food in it make for happy critters. Which means you need to clean your running gear every month or so. Normal for us here in NC USA which about the same latitude as the Med. Here they grow like crazy in summer. I need to dive in and scrape mine like yesterday.

gilbertpark said:

Yes, hard antifoul and the hull is clean so its working. Just the prop, shaft, rudders and trim tabs which weren't anti fouled that have the problem.

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Antifouling the hull but no the running gear might be ok in the Med, but very odd,it would never work here. My hull is done in ablative and running gear in hard. I have used Propspeed in the past instead of hard a/f. Your experience says you need to a/f the running gear.

Moved from "Welcome Mat" to "General Discussion"

The only sure method I have seen is to put the boat into a floating pool.

A pool is tied to where the boat parks and one edge of the floats that surround it are weighted .With engines off the boat is pulled into the pool and the stern edge with the weights is lifted above the water.

A bottle of Chlorox lasts a couple of weeks to keep the hull clean.

With holding tanks for waste the system works fine.