I would add the following additional information to Bill’s note below. The slip for Bill’s boat is about six slips away from mine. This past spring my West System guru faired a few hull bumps that resulted from prior balsa core repairs. When he was finished, we put two additional coats of Interlux barrier coat on for good measure. After doing so, I learned that the barrier coat is incompatible with the bottom paint I purchased without sanding and applying a solvent, so I decided to launch the boat without bottom paint and let nature do some of the work. I pulled the boat in August, power-washed a considerable amount of vegetative growth that had accumulated (including the spider web kind Bill described), and put the boat back in the water. I hauled the boat for the season about three weeks ago, and what a mess! Not only had the vegetative growth returned, but nearly the entire bottom was covered with zebra mussels. Power-washing got most of it off, but I have some additional work to do (which I needed to do anyway).
The bottom line: as confirmed by the condition of my boat at haul out, Bill’s bottom paint works very well in freshwater conditions. From: Bill Coleman via CnC-List <cnc-list@cnc-list.com> Sent: Saturday, October 23, 2021 2:16 PM To: 'Stus-List' <cnc-list@cnc-list.com> Cc: Bill Coleman <colt...@gmail.com> Subject: Stus-List Bottom Paints Again I know this subject is as old as boats, but I think I commented in the spring that I was trying a brand new paint and would report in the fall, so here it is. It is raining and chilly and not much else going on in the NE, so . .. The paint is Pettit Odyssey Trinidad, and when I hauled a week ago the results were nothing less than amazing. All of the clubs haul out guys (and girl) were in awe, and said it was the cleanest boat the have hauled this year. There was some scum from the bow back amidships and going down a few inches, mostly on the north side, oddly enough. But the rest was amazingly clean. Of note, here in the Great Lakes over the last 10 years or so there has been some new growth that no one seems to know anything about, looks like a spider web growing all over the bottom, and there was NONE of that. No Zebra Mussels, nothing. It is called ablative, but it is nowhere near as ablative as the previous year’s paint, very little came off with the pressure washer. Also, it called for two initial coats, I only used one. It goes on nice, and what I liked is that there is no heavy copper falling out, you don’t seem to need to keep stirring it as you go. In fact, I don’t think it has copper as we know it, Three Ingredients, Copper Thiocyanate, Econea, and Zinc Pyrithione. I wouldn’t consider it a racing paint, but after a month, I might. One of the guys hauled his First 40 out and cleaned it (VC17) for the last race two weeks before his final haulout, and his bottom was a mess, complete with ‘spiderwebs’ and Zebra Mussels. He was amazed to see how much scum was back on 2 weeks later. I think it’s the Zinc . . . .Also, a $30 rebate going on. Bill Coleman Entrada, Erie, PA
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