ablative paints??

[John Blakely]

Like all saltwater sailors, I anguish each year about bottom paints. I have used racing paints, water based paints, teflon based paints, petroleum based paints, all with a variety of results. I hate the process each year but its part of sailing. I think the idea of a multi season or ablative paint is great but always am concerned, particularily in the Chesapeake, about where do all those chemicals ablate to?  Since I see the faces of my grandkids and other little ones, as adults in the future asking our generation about pollution responsibility, I haggle each spring with myself about the ablatives. I have been keeping an eye on the eco friendly paints recently introducted(big bucks), but wonder what other folks, many in this forum who are genuinely thoughtful about what they do, think about where the chemicals go.

 

[Mark]

Lanoguard 3000

I am going to trial the above on my yachts this year.A natural product that apparently adheres well.

 

[Warren M.]

Ablative Paints, et al

I, too, sail on the Chesapeake and share your concern about the health of the bay. Yet I also use ablative paints on my boats. It seems to me that the non-ablatives (i.e., modified epoxies, etc.) also ablate but instead of everything washing off the bottom of the boat, they leave a non-toxic "matrix"on the hull that must then be sanded off (and who knows where that goes when you sand it).I think this is an issue of the lesser of a number of evils. Most legal bottom paints contain cuprous oxide that, regardless of how they are applied, are going to find their way into the water. Yet when I look around my marina, with hundreds of bottom-painted boats, I also see an abundance of plant and animal life in the water. Im guessing, or hoping, that the legal paints we use only do minimal damage or the environmentalists, like the Ches Bay Foundation, would have intervened by now.