Boating and Sailing.pdf - Moja ladja

Chapter 21: Keeping Your Boat Shipshape
Small shellfish are no problem to remove—they can be scrubbed away with a light chlorine
solution (about a cup in a gallon of water) and a medium bristle brush. (Better wear
rubber gloves if your hands are not barnacle-tough.)
If left until they become the size of a dime, barnacles become unbelievably difficult to get
off. There are some gel-acid cleaners that do the job, but they’re so powerful they will
also clean the skin right off any part of you they happen to contact—risky stuff for the
amateur to handle. Scraping and power-sanding is the more common solution, and the
sanding knocks off the gel coat so you then have to paint the bottom. So clearly, it’s wise
not to let the growth go past the initial stages. In warm weather, 10 days is about the max.
For larger boats that must be left in the water, it’s a good idea to don a mask and fins and
go over the side to give the bottom a monthly scrubbing with a firm brush (do this in the
summer). If you wait too long, the hull will have to be hauled out at considerable expense
and scraped down.
The easy way to avoid problems is not to leave your boat in the water for more than a few
days at a time. Although the larval forms may latch on to your hull if it sits still for only a
few hours, they quickly die and fall off if the boat is pulled out and allowed to dry.
Paint Your Bottoms
287
Another solution, most common for large boats that have to be left in the water, is to use
anti-fouling paint. This is a paint that contains elements toxic to barnacles and other
marine organisms. The most commonly used anti-fouling paints include copper as the
toxicant.
There are leaching paints, in which the copper leaches through the paint but leaves the
surface itself fairly intact, and ablative paints, which wear away in layers, revealing fresh
copper as the top layers disappear.
With either type of paint, a layer of gel-coat primer, applied after a thorough fine-grit
sanding, is usually needed to make the anti-fouling paint stick. Not all types are compatible
with each other—check with your dealer or read the cans for advice.
Take your checkbook with you when you go shopping for anti-fouling paint—it’s horrendously
expensive compared to conventional paints. Prices of $75 to $125 per gallon are
typical, and you need about a gallon to do the bottom of a typical 24-footer.
Bottom-painting is definitely one of the nastier jobs in boat maintenance, and if you can
afford it, you may want to have the boatyard do the job. But having the bottom of a large
boat painted by a boatyard can be an expensive proposition—many hours of labor plus the
cost of the materials add up. Shop around and get several estimates, in writing, before you
make a choice. Be sure the estimate includes the cost of hauling your boat—lifting it out