Antifoul that works?

[K4309 457]

51 minutes ago, motorb said:

These Weiti barnacles are insane! Seems to be a lot of spawn in the water there and up around Kawau.

We never had anything like this level of fouling at westhaven, but thats different water in a different location ( and maybe all the road runoff plus 40 odd years of old school antifoul contamination has something to do with it...)

Oddly enough, closing the second entrance actually helped reduce fouling for us while we were there. Maybe it's the silt passing through on the tides that feeds the barnacles?

Yeah,

I understand there is a major difference in fouling in the marinas with stale water and practically no water turnover, compared to estuary / river type moorings like Opua and Weiti (and many in between) that have high nutrients and high water flow.

Perhaps the marinas are still benefitting from the bio-accumulation of all the old antifouls that actually worked? and being marinas in never gets flushed out, unlike the river that is teaming with life (both in the environment and on our hulls).

Next time I dry out on the grids, I'm seriously thinking of putting a post on one of the Bucket People pages, get a boat load of marine organism scavengers to come down and strip the hull clean. I could even charge for it, given hull cleaning is still permitted, but Bucket Peopling has been banned around the wider coastline. Win / win really.

[Frank 227]

I;m involved in two boats, one on B pier at HMB and the other on a swing mooring both using Altex AF. The fouling rates are night and day different, honestly I think its 90% waterflow, more flow = more nutrients = accelerated growth.

[motorb 58]

On 23/04/2026 at 10:53 PM, K4309 said:

Next time I dry out on the grids, I'm seriously thinking of putting a post on one of the Bucket People 

Haha mate I was thinking the same thing! Just spent hours scraping barnacles off my hull plus about 3 kg of mussels off a mooring line