Anti-Fouling and Bottom Paints

Capt'n Pauley Esterle

Up until the time I moved Ternabout to Delaware and the Chesapeake Bay, she had been either trailer sailed or had been in fresh water. Fouling wasn’t a problem sailing on South Holston Lake in Tennessee. Gradually, a thin coating of slime would build up on the bottom. It was fun to don a facemask, jump into the cool water on a hot August day, and scrub the bottom. Truth be told, we scrubbed more often than necessary, but we stayed cool.

Moving the boat to the Chesapeake brought a completely new issue with it, the need for antifouling paint. I started reading about the various types on the market. Here is what I found.

Bottom Paints

Wow, where to start? There are a great many brands of bottom paints on the market today, each claiming to be the best there is and each having its vocal supporters. The sad fact is that the EPA is regulating bottom paint and has banned some products (tin-based bottom paint, for example). Many brands that used to work well aren’t available and many existing brands have been reformulated.

Bottom paints can be divided into three different types:

·      Hard

·      Ablative

·      Self-polishing

Photo taken halfway through application of the first coat of bottom paint, using Pettit VIVID, a hard paint with some antifouling properties. The boat is a 14-foot gunter yawl, being completed by the photographer. (Marty Loken photo)

Ablative and self-polishing paints can be applied over hard bottom paints but you can’t use a hard paint over the others. If you want to make that switch, you will need to remove the existing bottom paint and start over.