nice day on peconic bay today...

[tomcat rio]

clear as a bell no wind. got 2.0 hours...
i have about 75 hours on the new 310 hp peninsular...2.00:1 gear and 19x26 prop..
it seems to be comfortable at 2800 rpm/10 gph and 15.5-16.5 kts...
i think might do a little better if i had the bottom thoroughly stripped. this probably hasn't been done in 13 years. (1993 albin 28TE).

[jcollins]

Yes it was. We cruised the Gunpowder for an hour or so. The trees are beautiful this time of year. In a couple of weeks they'll all be gone. I'm not a fan of short days and cold weather.
49 days till Christmas.

[Veebyes2]

Wind was gusting to 30kts here today but that did not stop us from at least paying the boat a visit on it's mooring to give the genny & engine a run just to slosh the oil around.

Lucky for us the wind was in a direction where we could stay in the lee of land for most of our route to & from the Albin. It ia about a 10-15 min skiff ride. We took a longish way back which took us across open water but we had the sea behind us. Still a 2' or so wind driven chop can be interesting with a 14' Maritime Skiff.

Next weekend is a long weekend. Hopefully we can get a couple nights out.

It is time to think about what we will do for the boat parade this year. This is what we looked like last year.

[jcollins]

Veebyes,
Is that an elephant? What's the occasion of the parade?

John

[Mariner]

Tomcat,

What do you mean by having the bottom stripped? Do you mean repainted?

[Mariner]

no, having all the old layers removed, something like this,
...
http://www.sodablastboats.com/

Are you using sloughing anti-fouling paint? If so, the old paint should be wearing off on it's own, and unless you have an extremely coarse build-up of old paint, I don't see how it would benefit you at all.

Nothing will slow your boat down more than parasitic marine growth, so not having anti-fouling paint certainly isn't going to work.

Soda blasting is something that is typically done when someone wants to permanently remove paint from a boat in order to either leave it bare (only suitable for trailered boats, and even then the hull needs to be re-gelcoated), or to apply a non-compatible type of new paint.

My guess would be that neither of the above applies to you.

[DougSea]

I have to go with Tomcat on this one. The bottom paint on my boat is in HORRIBLE shape. Layer after layer of who knows what. I spoke with the soda blasting guys at the Norwalk Boat Show and I'm planing on having my hull taken down to bare gelcoat this Spring and then applying a nice new (smooth!) layer of primer and quality high performance bottom paint.

There's nothing like a good coat of hard paint to make a planing hull perform!

[Veebyes2]

Sodablasting sure looks tempting especially after 10 years of buildup.

Still, I've got to wonder what the cost vs benefit is going to be? If bits of bottom paint are peeling off & I paint over the bare spots who is going to see the patchy bits? The fish? I don't care what they think. Speed & fuel saving benefit? I would think that I'd have to burn an awful lot of fuel to 'save' the difference on a smooth soda blasted hul vs on that has 10 years of buildup.

I would look very hard at soda blasting a hull that is say 15 years old & spends the entire year in water except for a weekend of bottom painting. That boat is a prime candidate for a good cleaning down to gelcoat, drying out, blister filling, good barrier coating & then bottom paint.

Dougsea, good luck with the hard bottom paint. Your water may be cool enough not to encourage fast growth buildup. If not, at least you can apply an ablative paint over a hard paint the next time round.

I use ablative paint on my 14' Maritime Skiff too. Guess it's speeds are similar to a 28. The bottom still gets hairy. Water temp is up to 83 by Aug. It is 73 right now. Below the mid 70s growth seems to slow dramatically.

[chiefrcd]

Doug, did they give you a price? I'm thinking along the same lines. The previous owners records indicated that he had painted the bottom every 6 months....can't imagine why, but that puts 10 coats on the boat and the last two I put on... He used a hard paint so I went to Micron 66 for the last two years. Seems to work very well...still get slime but it comes off when you run the boat.

[Mariner]

Our boat is in the water year round. We use ablative paint. It keeps the growth to a minimum and can be reapplied right over itself year after year. To keep growth down even when the boat is not being used (ablative doesn't work if the boat doesn't move), we have a diver clean it quarterly to the tune of about $100. This reduces our repainting schedule to about once every two years.

[Veebyes2]

Chiefrcd, I'm a mushroom too as far as price goes. Looked over the website & it appears very interesting. As far as I know sodablasting is not available here. Looks like a good new small business opportunity.

[DougSea]

Doug, did they give you a price? I'm thinking along the same lines. The previous owners records indicated that he had painted the bottom every 6 months....can't imagine why, but that puts 10 coats on the boat and the last two I put on... He used a hard paint so I went to Micron 66 for the last two years. Seems to work very well...still get slime but it comes off when you run the boat.

I've got it written down at home but I think it was about $25 a foot. If you guys could see the bottom of my boat you wouldn't doubt this was the right way to go! There are sections of bare bottom, some that look like they've got one layer of paint, some with 10, and everything in between! I'm basically looking to 'start fresh' and know that it's done right. We get fairly heavy growth in LI Sound and you really need a quality paint job.

[AlMar]

Dougsea;
"I'm planing on having my hull taken down to bare gelcoat this Spring and then applying a nice new (smooth!) layer of primer and quality high performance bottom paint. "
I'm assuming you meant a barrier coat vice a "primer". Soda blasting down here is about 10-15 bucks a ft. We have found a mix that worked VERY well for us, which was two coats of Interlux 2000, followed by a coat of "Supershipbottom", a hard ablative. We have a pretty good growth here and we get a good two years out of the paint. When you start to see the barrier coat, it's time to repaint. Like Mariner says, the boats gotta be used to make it effective.
AlMar