Anti fouling for RIB tubes?

Can and should anti-fouling be used on RIB-tubes. Is there any special type of paint to use? any type that is really bad?

Thanks/J

 

Fouling on RIB material is serious. Scraping the things of is hard work and not very successfull. It is soo easy to puncture the fabric. If you can get it out of the water when finished with it the better.

Larger RIBS are anti fouled but I have never heard on any fouling that cant be used.

 

MDR and Pettit, among others, make antifouling paint formulated specifically for inflatables. If you follow the preparation and application instructions faithfully, they claim the product will stick through inflation, deflation, even folding for storage.

 

Inflation ,deflation and folding? Cant be a hard paint then. Its a RIB?? Take a bit of folding??

 

I have been testing coatings that I have developed for marine use. So far I have them for hulls (testing on Hypalon now w/excellent results), props and running gear and topside applications including Teak (Developmental stage). It is not anti-fouling but a foul release type. We recently applied it to the propeller, Fiberglass hull and the lower surface of the Hypalon tubes on a 9' ft Apex Rib w/Honda 4-stroke 8-hp motor. The only change was an oil change to the motor (this was a used boat I bought and the engine oil was in bad shape, it idles much smoother now). The coating is a clear ceramic type coating that is extremely hard and flexable, non-toxic to the marine enviroment, contains no poisions or heavy metals and has extremely good UV protection. The boat gets up on plane in about 30% of the time it took pre-coating (the hull was clean in prior testing) and picked up approx 5 mph on the top end. Total material used was about 10 oz. It has only been in the water for 2 weeks so testing continues.

Doug