Bottom paint

[Trojan]

I was talking to an old boat person. He rebuilds and refinishes old boats. He said that you should not waist money on expensive bottom paints. He said go and purchase the best home water base outdoor paint you can find and use it to paint your bottom. He said it will work better than any marine bottom paint on the market and do just as good of job. What do you think? He refinishes old old boats for a living. I think next year I'm going to try it.

BILL

 

[SKYCHENEY]

Anti-fouling paint has compounds like copper in it to help keep growth off of it. I doubt house paint would work too well.

 

[magnawake]

So what keeps the sea growth from attaching to the hull. I thought the paint was ladden with copper or something to prevent growth.

 

[Finalee]

Why not paint a piece of fiberglass and hang it from a string next to your boat. Use house paint and antifouling in different spots and see what happens.

 

[MikeP]

If house paint actually worked for this purpose i'm sure it would be illegal to use!

But seriously, I can't imagine it works - at least in salt water. But Finalee's answer is perfect - try a test and see. If it does, we are all going to save a bunch of money!

 

[yachtsmanbill]

Billy the Slasher (this guy used to own 2-1/2 GT40 Fords and now has a RIVA hot rod boat) used to use red porch and deck enamel on his 32 foot wood connie... barely had a slime problem at haulout after all summer on the river. ws

 

[Canuck Dennis]

And, if California is a guide to current thinking......possibly ALL anti fouling paints may be banned before 2019.....including the current paint on your boat at time of the ban. Not only copper type anti fouling....

 

[rsmith]

Save the barnacle!!!

 

[Angela]

Save the barnacle!!!

Don't worry....I see a lot of people, just on my dock alone, who are saving them! They'll never become extinct.

 

[saltshaker]

This was standard practice on wood hulls in freshwater for years. Only real fouling threat was slime. Don't think it would work against zebra muscles or in saltwater. Might work if you added red pepper to it but not sure the pepper could release from exterior house paint. Do the test but also leave a section untreated.

 

[mttopd]

Met a guy with an old wood Trojan 42', who said he ground up jalepeno peppers into blue pool paint, he claimed it worked well.

 

[Trojan]

One of you guys need to do a saltwater test using good house paint. I don't have any saltwater around the great lakes. This guy lives some place in Maine and has said to have been doing this for years. I don't know.

BILL

 

[jim rosenthal]

Looking forward to the test results. This is why I miss Powerboat Reports- they used to do long-term bottom paint tests which were very useful...

 

[hibanx]

Probably works fine in fresh water, or colder climates that have much less growth, and the boats are only used seasonally. In places further south, I doubt it would last 2 days in the tropics.

 

[Mark Giovanniello]

I was talking to an old boat person. He rebuilds and refinishes old boats. He said that you should not waist money on expensive bottom paints. He said go and purchase the best home water base outdoor paint you can find and use it to paint your bottom. He said it will work better than any marine bottom paint on the market and do just as good of job. What do you think? He refinishes old old boats for a living. I think next year I'm going to try it.

BILL

Lots of variables here.....meaning there are more questions than answers.

Does the guy rebuild and refinish "old boats" that are stored on trailers or on boats that spend up to 2 or 3 years at a time in warm salt water. True there are some environments, like turbid rivers with acidic water, where there is little or no aquatic growth.


I'm certainly not a lobbyist for the paint and chemical companies, but there must be some logical explanation as to why the government agencies like the Navy and Coast Guard, and commercial shipping companies, as well as tens of thousands of recreational boaters use antifouling paints, other than a conspiracy to debunk yacht and ship owners into spending money they dont have to.

Back in the day when the boat needed to be launched while the bottom paint was still wet (Pettit Supertrop), some of the old-schoolers used to put ground hot pepper or tabasco sauce in the paint to give it an extra kick, but in the fall all the boats came back to the yard with more or less the same amount of growth, meaning that the spots that flaked off or were missed had more growth than what got painted....same as today!

 

[Vincentc]

Looking forward to the test results. This is why I miss Powerboat Reports- they used to do long-term bottom paint tests which were very useful...

Try Practical Sailor.