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A new (zealand) copper antifoul system...


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Bit like the "special prop panit" some areas it works others it does not. Had copper coat on previous boat and sort worked,up a river and the barnies got there feet in to the silt that stuck to the hull,even though fast tidal flow. But quick swim helped. But prop speed was a fail.

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1. If the authorities were serious about avoiding marine pollution, which is what antifouling is, they'd make it simple for anyone who wants to to wash down their boats every few weeks. When Alan Gibbs was alive and sailing his Reactor and winning most of his races he never used antifoul. Instead. he regularly washed down on a tidal pole.

2. CC has always been tricky to apply and expensive. If I was to get it I would insist on a warranty, an escrow and some independent 3rd party in the case of dispute. The stuff I've cobbled together below, including form earlier crew posts may be of interest:

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QHyxgwUf6dk
can work great but MUST MUST MUST be applied properly. Maybe some batches don't work. The hull must be cleaned and sanded right back to the original gelcoat and keyed with 120 or 80 grit sandpaper, the application should be carried out in one day or as we did as there’s was only two of us apply to one side of the boat one day the other side the following day we had 13 litres of Coppercoat so we managed to apply 5 x coats per side, applying each coat once the previous coat and dried sufficiently (tacky), the boat must then be left for at least 3 days to dry then move the stands and blocks apply to those areas and wait another 3 days then sand the Coppercoat with either Scotchbrite pads or light sandpaper till you can see the copper sparkle then back in the water. If the above application process was not followed exactly then that may be why you are having issues if the Coppercoat is mixed correctly and stirred frequently while in the container or tray.and the above followed all should be well
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When we applied we stripped back all old antifoul and did a good based coat of interprotect, to give a good clean sound base. On the application, the CC should be applied wet on tacky. If the whole boat can't be done wet on tacky in one go, the advice was to do half (one side) fully, then the other side. We did about 5 coats total. If it doesn't go on wet on tacky, the bond between the two coats is distinct. I'm not a coatings expert, but I assume this isn't good when the top coat slowly abraids back to the joining layer in the future. So your 'touch-up' work doesn't sound ideal. More so if the base CC it went on has already aged green. Your last two photos look like the hull base is very rough in its preparation. You shouldn't have the pronounced edges and pits etc. I'm only aware of two issues with CC application. Putting it on in such a way that you get runs in it (which isn't a major, it just leaves runs in it). The other issues we had a very little bit of, and I'm aware another boat had a bit of, is a thing like pox (like osmosis pox on a glass boat) these are blisters that form and then burst with over vigorous scrapping. They are to do with moisture or the temp of the surface on painting. We got a few on the shaddy side of our lead keel, which would have been cooler and not necessarily dry. The reason I mention them is ours didn't appear for several years. I understand the quickest they turn up is circa 6 months. They can be treated by grinding out and applying touch ups. To get the 10 years performance life out of CC, you need a certain thickness of product. The quality of prep and soundness of the base coat will influence risk of it falling of over that 10 year life. If quality of prep was poor, then this pox issue could become apparent in a year or two.
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selektope.com
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John B: I've had a remarkable run out of 66
2007"proper job"( 3 or 4 tins of it)
2010, leading edges, rudder and some of the keel recoated and back in.
2012 same but just before relaunch I thought another coat would be worth doing.So I put a one tin thin coat on.
2015 haul and a 'proper job ' again.
In between she gets a dive clean or a floating dock water blast. In fact this year we did a floating dock and a hard sand back about 3 months before to make this haul a little bit easier.
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harrytom: altex no 10 for me. applied last november,cleaned off late february,cleaned off 3 weeks ago,no barnacles only slime,so will use again.boat spends more time swinging on mooring than used.Tamaki river
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Scubash has just posted a new topic entitled "Hull cleaning" in forum "Marine Talk".Anyone in need of hull cleaning, please contact me here in a pm or via phone. 0211706138
'anti foul copper etc bad.pdf'
1. fungus Streptomyces avermitilis at 0.1% in paint kills barnacles. Hans Elwing Goteborg Uni. Aug 2009
2. One challenge in creating such a coating is that the critical length scales involved in organism attachment range from hundreds of nanometers to centimeters. Efimenko et al. have developed polymer coatings that possess a hierarchical wrinkled structure. They stretched and then cross-linked the surface of poly(dimethylsiloxane), after which they applied a fluorinated silane monolayer. On gentle relaxation of the stress, a rippled surface layer formed, wherein each wrinkle had smaller-scale wrinkles on top of it that themselves bore even smaller wrinkles, proceeding over five generations. In seawater tests, flat polymer films showed fouling after a few weeks, whereas the wrinkled polymers resisted barnacle accumulation over a period of 18 months. In tests on the adhesion of green algae zoospores, the wrinkled films performed less well, as the spores could nestle and be protected from shear flows and physical contacts within the wrinkles. However, a combination of topology and the right surface chemistry conferred improved resistance, pointing toward development of a nontoxic universal antifouling coating.
ACS Appl. Mater. Interfaces 1, 10.1021/am9000562 (2009).
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Karen wooley - dolphin skin antifoul, for all its seeming smoothness, is slightly rippled on the nanometer scale. Still, these ripples are not large enough to hinder movement through the water but are small enough that they leave few "niches" for marine creatures to grip.
"For a long time antifouling work was geared toward making super-smooth surfaces," explained Wooley. "It was thought that if the surfaces were super-smooth and had less surface energy then the organisms couldn't attach.
"In fact, that's completely false," she continued. Her current antifouling project "completely goes against the grain … Wooley formulated the idea of mixing two normally incompatible polymers -- a hyperbranched fluoropolymer and a linear polyethylene glycol -- and allowing them to phase-separate into distinct domains, one interspersed in the other. A chemical process called crosslinking then solidifies the mixture, thus creating a heterogeneous coating that, upon close examination, reveals treacherous nano-sized terrain composed of mountains and valleys, ranging from hard to soft, hydrophilic to hydrophobic. .. "When the polymer surface is first prepared, it looks like a bunch of sub-microscopic mountains but when it's placed under artificial sea water, the entire surface swells and gives us this inverted structure," Wooley explained. "I think this is really exciting because what it means is that we can 'tune' the size of the surface features and determine whether our hypothesis is really correct
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re antifouling agent, octadecylamine, Tauranga Harbourwatch would like these discharges stopped until such time as research shows them to be benign.  Hylton Rhodes, Tauranga Harbourwatch Inc
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Oriana Brine doing masters Auckland Uni on non-indigenous biofouling.  Antifouling. See boatie file
373 7599  x88483  = marine sciences lab
Obri005@aucklanduni.ac.nz
Risk factors for biofouling of recreational vessels moored in berths or on swing moorings Survey.htm
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Hempel - Hempasil X3
The latest non-toxic solution to barnacles and growth on the hull. Not antifoul but non-stick fouling release - containing no biocides and with lower solvent emissions. Technology as yet only used on ships because of the specific method required for application.
www.hempel.com

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For what its worth we applied CC in NZ through MEC on our sailing cat in 2012 and it worked well for about 7 years. Had one decent sand back in 2017. It was end of life by early 2020 and for about 12 months it required very regular scrubbing to keep clean-ish. We replaced with CC here in Oz in 2021 and seems to be doing well 18 months later. For us it has paid dividends. But it MUST be applied properly. 

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How often does CC need blasting and/or sanding, at least how often are you guys doing so? I imagine a neglected boat is still going to get some barnacles (or worse) growing that could take a chip of the paint off with them?

I just seem to see some mixed reviews, and I wonder if it's as much about the prep work vs the tolerance for a missed season or what defines "low maintenance".

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2 hours ago, motorb said:

How often does CC need blasting and/or sanding, at least how often are you guys doing so? I imagine a neglected boat is still going to get some barnacles (or worse) growing that could take a chip of the paint off with them?

I just seem to see some mixed reviews, and I wonder if it's as much about the prep work vs the tolerance for a missed season or what defines "low maintenance".

Never, just a scotchbrite pad maybe 3 times per year. Barnacles fall 9ff and it will never chip off, hard as nails.

Only sand when you intend to recoat.

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2 hours ago, Kevin McCready said:

BP. Did you do it yourself? If not, can you recommend anyone? Offline is fine.

No but I wish I had as it was a clusterf*ck that almost ended in court. I eventually re did the keel myself, it's excellent now.

Last time I spoke with them Hibiscus Marine Coatings at GH were doing applications and I have great faith in them. Ask for Carla. 

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14 hours ago, Black Panther said:

If anyone is interested one of our club members is in the middle of the process h3re at WBC

Seeing as I'm looking at both my antifouling and berthage options right now, I'm very interested!

 

I'll try figure out the messaging system...

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