Barnacle Prevention

That's a great idea! Does ANY sea life grow beneath the sock? Does it need to be a tight mesh? Do you know how it works?

It seems like it might be a matter if sunlight not getting through... or maybe the food source can't get through, so no sea life can survive on the hull...or the baby barnacles can't fit through the mesh?

 

The sock must be marine blue, otherwise it doesn't work.

 

Seriously? I can't tell if you are joking or not.

 

Lycra type material, (like what they use on those new Olympic swimming costumes), has recently - in rather secretive tests I discovered - been shown to work very well too...

 

So you put a lycra cover on your hull and the barnacles stick to it? And then when they build up you clean them off or get another lycra cover?

 

dont luv Barnacles

Hey,
I am a work boat instructor over here in Norway and international....just to let ya know....barnacles are part of owning a boat.....kind of like checking the air on your tires of a car....
there may be product out there the say they will keep them off....But I also win a million dollars once a month from Nigeria to!!!!
sorry dude.....just hope your not around the carribean where you need to clean about once a month

 

I'm talking about putting a cover over the hull. The Lycra style swim suit that the Olympic athletes wear is a slippery material. I think someone was trying to say that barnacles won't stick to this material because its too slippery.

I'm talking about a more low tech solution.

I'm just talking about covering the hull with any old material to get the barnacles to stick to that, instead of your hull. Does anybody have experience with that?

 

Add some 5% hot chilli powder (the REAL hot one) to your antifouling. Thats the cheapest way to slow marine growth down a bit.
That gives a nice contrast to CDK´s navy blue socks as well!

And it was NOT a joke.............

Regards
Richard

 

HAHA! That's a definitely home brew idea right there. I like it!

 

Chili Pepper antifoul

The chili pepper idea was mentioned on this subject thread, along with some others that have not been mentioned here yet:

http://www.boatdesign.net/forums/open-discussion/antifoul-paint-16613-3.html#post174859

http://www.boatdesign.net/forums/open-discussion/antifoul-paint-16613.html

 

...and some more antifoul discussions/suggestions/opinions/experiences:

http://www.yachtforums.com/forums/technical-discussion/5148-running-gear-antifoul.html

 

No

that is a proven recipe. And has saved me many many thousands of $$$.
But the stuff must be prime quality (ground Habanero´s), due to the high Capsaicin content.

Regards
Richard

 

How long have the hot peppers lasted you? Do you still have to scrape from time to time?

It seems like the best thing would be just to cover the hull with material, so that the barnacles attach to that instead of the hull. I read through those other posts and a guy said that works great for props. Just keep it covered then take it off when you use the boat.

There's no way I'm going to use those super dangerous anti-fouling paints. They are really bad for the environment. Some people have gotten really sick and have almost died by being in the water around their boats. TFT is the worst chemical I think, but its outlawed now.

 

"Some people have gotten really sick and have almost died by being in the water around their boats." is an absolute nonsense, if you are attributing that the cause of death or severe illness was TFT released into the water by the normal ablative process....

 

Re. chili peppers:

I seem to recall an article a few years back about some folks who had made a hot sauce that was, in essence, chili peppers reduced down to not much more than pure crystalline capsaicin. The stuff came in at something around sixteen million on the Scoville scale (for comparison: jalapenos are a few thousand, habaneros about a hundred thousand, police mace around five million).

A dab of that ought to take care of your barnacles


Re. Danger to people from antifouling

Obviously you shouldn't drink the stuff, but frankly I don't see how enough of it can leach into the water from one boat to kill someone swimming near the boat. Or even to make said person sick.

Tributyltin (TBT) is seriously nasty stuff- after all, the reason it makes good antifouling is that it's good at killing things. From what I understand, it's not particularly stable in aqueous solution, breaking down into less harmful products fairly quickly once it's released from the paint. The concerns about the stuff seem to relate mostly to its tendency to build up in seabed sediment (where it can't break down as easily), thus killing all sorts of plants, shellfish, etc. that live in the sediment.

Copper-based paints aren't terribly friendly either, but again, they're not likely to be harmful to people swimming nearby. Your drinking water pipes are copper, and virtually every swimming pool has copper dissolved in it (as cupric sulphate) as an algaecide.

If you are getting sick from swimming near your boat, the water is obviously polluted somehow. But it's not very likely that your antifouling has anything to do with it. Maybe it's the head. Or maybe unburned fuel from a badly tuned engine. Or maybe it's that factory a hundred miles upstream. Or a bacterial bloom that's sprung up around some farm runoff. There are many, many possibilities....