San Francisco Bay Boat Owners: How's Your Bottom Growth This Winter?

[rardiH36]

My berthing port is Sausalito. Three miles North of the Golden Gate Bridge.

I engage a diver service to do quarterly (approximate) bottom cleanings/inspections.

But between these "official" cleanings, I also brush the bottom myself with an assortment strait and curved poles terminating with a stiff Nylon/StainlessSteel bristle swimming pool brush. Get's maybe 80% of the bottom.

I brushed yesterday for the first time is a couple of months. First thing I noticed was that the "fuzz" of growth looked different than normal. Second, that upon brushing, the "fuzz" sloughed away from the hull easily without the usual repeated up/down brushing.

Anybody else on SF Bay notice different bottom growth this year?

I expect that the bay's normal algae flora is disrupted by all the fresh water that is flowing into the bay from the extraordinary wet winter this year. Certainly some of the fresh water is from local run-off. But primarily it's from the near panic releases of rain, and snow melt, that has overwhelmed spillways of hundreds of Sierra reservoirs.

 

[Allan12210]

Over here in Alameda. I don't know if the last couple of years have been strange because of warmer El Nino water and now like you say, a high influx of fresh water. My last diver report indicated that my paint is now in fair condition. That's about 6 or 7 months earlier than I would have normally hauled (long term average). So, things may be different. Regarding the fresh water, we sailed up to Marin YC this past weekend. Our Electroscan (recently rebuilt and functioning perfectly prior) could not achieve the proper amps without indication of an alarm. We had to supplement it with a couple of measures of salt to get back into the normal range.

How about that storm? We had a windy run to Marin on Friday after 2:00 when it calmed down slightly. Then we were going to come home on Monday, but it was raining too much (no dodger) so we waited until Tuesday. Monday night the gusts were between 50-60 mph. That was a good choice. Then we drove home to San Jose and oops everything was flooded in the lowlands. Luckily we live on higher ground and only the neighbor's fences on the sides away from our shared ones blew away. But I digress.