Applying anti-fouling is an unpleasant annual chore that gets worse the bigger the boat, so during the 2009/10 re-fit we had Coppercoat anti-fouling professionally applied to Speedwell. This product consists of copper powder in an epoxy resin that’s applied to the boat in a number of coats. In our case this was on top of new gellcoat and an epoxy barrier layer following treatment for osmosis so we had it applied to a brand new hull surface.
The manufacturer claims that Coppercoat should be effective for over 10 years and various independent tests appear to back this up. This should mean that the relatively high cost of application is recovered against the cost and time saved by not having to apply traditional anti-fouling over the years.
Speedwell looked very smart in here new anti-foul:
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First Year
After our first season with the new coating we were interested to see what she looked like when she was hauled out. The answer was very good. There was a thin coating of slime on the hull that quickly came off with a pressure wash, apart from that the hull was clean as a whistle. The only fouling was a few barnacles on the prop shaft, which isn’t coated (it’s just plain stainless steel). This season Speedwell had spent several month on the English east coast, mostly stationary in a marina while the re-fit was completed, then 4 months traveling up the east coast of the UK, through the fresh water Caledonian canal and cruising on Scotland’s west coast.
Second Year
Our second season was spent cruising up to Orkney and Shetland then back down to Inverness. We launched the boat in May 2011 and left her in the water overwinter at Inverness, lifting her for a day in May 2012 to replace the anodes and service the sea cocks. After a full 12 months in the water the hull was once again very clean when the boat was lifted. As in the previous season there was a thin layer of slime, slightly thicker on the rudder, which easily came off with pressure washing.
Results So Far
After two full seasons in UK waters the anti-fouling is performing well. We plan to report here about the coating’s performance in future as we take Speedwell to different cruising grounds.