folks, i am spending about 6 months in the water. its a fresh water river. can you advise some good but reasonably priced bottom paint that i dont need to reapply every season preferably?
best bottom paint for fresh water, hunter 26
- Thread starter Max.C
- Start date
Ablative is the only choice if you want to keep it out of the water over winter. I've had good luck with Pettit
Yes, as previously mentioned, ablatives can withstand prolonged exposure to air. Hard paints typically cannot.
The majority of boats on wet moorings here use VC-17. I'm not sure how well it holds up out of the water, I've heard it is best to splash within a few days of painting with VC-17 but the data sheet doesn't say anything about this and I have seen several boats prepped and painted in the fall, left over the winter and still had good results. If you are dry sailing, there won't be much time for growth anyway and VC-17 is really easy to clean growth off, even a wet sponge will clean it up.
We used VC-17 during our 16 years with our H26. It will require annual repainting in the spring. A good pressure wash and a like scuffing with a scotch-brite pad is all the prep you need. Be aware that it cannot be overcoated with any other paint and will require stripping before you can use any other paint. We never had a fouling issue or zebra mussels. The newer VC-17M also keeps the slime from building up.
Owned our 260 since 2004. Sits in Columbia River for 6 months at a time. Pull it every season for six months on the trailer. Use professionally applied Pettit Ultima SR60 ablative. It's halfway through its third bottom paint job in 18 years. Never had a problem with bunks chafing the paint off. We don't clean bottom when we pull the boat to avoid reducing paint effectiveness.
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I used Pettit Vivid on my trailer sailor that would sit in fresh water for a season in Michigan. At the time it was the only one that would allow repeated drying / re-wetting and still kept killing things. I'd crawl under the trailer in the spring and touch up the bare spots, but never really had to re-coat everything. VC17 probably would work as well, but I'm not certain that it would keep killing after drying out all winter. It's certainly very tender, so at least the trailer bunk area would be down to bare hull.