Barnacle Prevention

I have been very ill after cleaning bottom paint. By that I mean scrubbing and making the water adopt the same color. This is a little more that just scraping.

I am not normally susceptible to allergies etc and it takes a lot to knock me off my feet but feel terribly ill I did.

I asked a friend who does it regularly if he felt ill and he said "why do you think I charge 100 dollars".

If you dry sand it without a mask ---well I don't know Im not a doctor but I would be very ill.

 

Marshmat....

Marshmat....

Would it be too much to ( briefly ) explain what that means ?

I would like to understand on a ( at least basic) level .

 

I've been said by Bright Saprk that their copper cathodes create a very low concentration of coming and going flux of copper ions around the hull which oxidize to cuprous oxide (Cu2O), which afterwards switch into cupric oxide (CuO) which subsecuently degrades into copper salts, unharmful to the environment.

This low harmful behaviour is said to have been tested by the Dutch Institute for Sea Research

Any comentaries?

 

i can do that...

capsaicin is the stuff which makes chillis hot - it is the stuff which burns your tounge and mouth...
the scale (Scoville scale) he was talking about is for measuring the 'hotness' of different types of chilli sauces which he gave some examples afterwards...

capsaicin is basically a chemical warfare like defending means for the plant... it gets pretty unhealthy in high dosis...

 

Thank you .
Understood.

 

Thats "The Source" named. Awful stuff! And pure chemical.
But you do´nt need that (and it costs 5000$ kg)

I got the hint from a Mexican fisherman and he used what he had, ground (to flour consistency) Habaneros. Scoville around 250.000.
We mixed it in the "Hempel" antifouling (about 5%) we used these days. The time between renewing the bottom went from 2 to 3 years, that was a success in my opinion (and saved a few $$$ on a 50 meter boat).

RE illness
I never heard one got ill by swimming near antifouling, what a nonsense!
Sanding it off without protection is a different thing of course. But sanding the plain wood can make you sick (just choose the "right" wood).

Regards
Richard

 

i heard of this chilli stuff as anti foul years ago... to live-aboards it is common knowledge...

i am really wondering why a lot of folks in here never heard of it...

 

They do´nt grow Habanero´s in Austria!.............

 

If the Habaneros do to the eyes of the barnacles the same thing they did to my tongue and throat, it has to be an excelent antifouling, no doubt!

Cheers

 

and neither in germany...

 

Antifoul paint is a different mix from area to area. I know that the stuff made under license probably here in Thailand and Malaysia is different from the European stuff.

As far as swimming near a boat with antifoul, this would not cause illness but if you where to scrub the slime or algea off and the water takes the cloudy ablative antifoul you will absorb that some how through the skin maybe,-- but it does/ will make you feel very ill a few hours after. Symptoms are stiff joints and a sore chest (like flu) it has generally gone by the next morning.

I too was skeptical of that being the cause but a repeat proved that it was . I will never scrub an anti foul boat again.

Using chillies or capsicum has been thought for many years to be a way of anti fouling but as long as we have profit over success being the driving factor we will never move forward at a speed we are capable of.

Teflon --- the non stick frying pan surface has been experimented with years ago. As Non stick, it would appear to be perfect stuff so the barnacles could not stick.

Apparently a paint could not be made that could coat a surface with Teflon. Teflon being Teflon will not stick as nothing will stick to it.

 

I'm all for trying the chili pepper paint job!

Also, what about just covering the hull with material while its sitting at the marina?

People say that putting a sock over thier props works great because the barnacles stick to that instead.

 

I use a sock. I make them from discarded boom covers or other Sunbrella covers that yachties throw away, my props are 24 inch so the socks are big.

5 Minutes on the sewing machine.

They need to be tight around the blades or the gentle slop or swell will cause the blades to cut through the prop bags (as I call them)

It works a treat 100%, the props are clean. The socks are so fouled I cut them loose and let it drop to the sea bed. Sorry clean Earth people but they are just too heavy you haul out on the dock,--then what do I do with them?

 

Other capsaicin like alternative low toxicity antifouling compounds: sodium benzoate, benzoic acid, tannic acid and zosteric acid.

Another more environmentally friendly possibility:

The bacterium Vibrio alginolyticus, purified from Ulva reticulata produces sulfated polysaccharides metabolites with high potency against larval attachment and metamorphosis of a broad array of marine invertebrates. Sulfated polysaccharides is not only non-toxic but its action is also reversible. It is susceptible to microbial degradation and thus do not bio-accumulate.

In the presence of the agent, larval attachment and metamorphosis of different phyla of fouling invertebrates is specifically disrupted. This effect is not permanent, thus once these organisms drift away, their instinctive settlement behavior commences naturally.

See: http://ledweb.scsio.ac.cn/download/Professor Qian/Antifouling compounds from marine algae.pdf

Cheers.

 

Have any experiments been made with a thickish, flexible, peelable paint barrier - perhaps silicon or rubberised paint? To work like the sock idea, over the whole hull; not (unduly) toxic, but a sacrificial barrier to be removed relatively easily when it carries too many crusty critters, revealing a nice clean hull underneath?

Possible issues:

getting it sufficiently adhesive not to get ripped off by wave action, but still much easier to remove than chiseling barnacles;

comparative cost with traditional antifouls??