It is bottom paint time, I have had great luck with the two coats of Petit Trinidad SR that I put on in July of 2006. That is 32 months of service and it is getting a bit thin in areas. I know there are some new more enviromentaly freindly paints available but, no one has any experience with them and what works well in one geographic area may not in another.
I am prone to stay with what I know works while it is still available. It also adds $600 for a second coat, but this too looks good if I can get nearly another three years service out of it.
Any advice?
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Cepheus dream
C36 MK I # 825
MK I Tech Editor No Mas
Steve, I am a fan of Pettit Trinidad SR (hard) as well, and have used nothing else since new. What I began to do with my paint a year ago is to put a different color on...it used to be blue (looks like a medium blue in the can, but in the water it lightens the shade to a caribbean blue-green), but last time I put black over the blue. Now I will be able to assess the life of a paint job, as I will be able to see the lighter blue if/when it appears.
I put a lot of miles on my boat each year...from Portland, Oregon to Puget Sound and some cruising up there and in Canada, then back down to PDX...that's well over a thousand miles a season. But I winter here in PDX, in a marina on the Columbia River, in fresh water that kills off all the salt water baddies, and the salt water voyages kill off all the fresh water gunk. I hope to get at least three seasons from my paint.
Larry Brandt
S/V High Flight #2109
Pacific Northwest, PDX-based
2002 C-36 mkII SR/FK M35B
Pulled the boat out two days ago, after pressure wash of the bottom I was amazed at how well the bottom paint had held up. There were two thin spots but the rest of the bottom looked great and I am sure it would have lasted another six months. I will use two coats of the same Petit Trinadad SR this time, if I can get three years out of the bottom job I will have no complaints.
I did note that my micro blisters were back, I will continue to use the golf ball theory on these. The thinking being that these little surface irregularities like the dimples on a golf ball reduce surface tension and cause the boat to go faster.
In reality this issue came up during my haul out prepurchase survey, everyone got very excited about osmotic blistering of boat hulls a decade or so ago and yards were all pushing barrier coats to prevent this. Unfortunatly many times the barrier coat was put on a bottom that was not fully dried out. The result is barrier coat or epoxy blisters. On my boat this is the case the underlying gel coat has no blisters but there are countless little blisters in the barrier coat.
This looks like a case of a cure being applied when no disease was present and now the cure has a disease.
Oh yeh, as for new products, the yard owner me his Swede 55 that he double hands to Hawaii in the Pacific Cup. He had used a self polishing bottom paint Micron 33, He had painted the bottom of the boat 18 months ago and has never scrubed it, it looked like fresh paint no slime at all. I did not see any belly up dolphins, whales or other fish floating around the boat even though it is not one of the eco freindly new paints as it does contain heavy metals and biocides. It is spendy about twice the price of Petitt Trinadad, maybe next time. For now I will stick with a paint that needs a scrub occasionly, I assume this will be my contribution to mother nature by creating a small ecosystem on my bottom between scubbings. When I do kill those little bastards by scrubbing, letting them live for a while should counter the bad Karma of nasties used in the paint. It will be like corbon credits.
Cepheus dream
C36 MK I # 825
MK I Tech Editor No Mas