We have been talking a lot about antifouling in the last weeks.
We know that we have a lot of friends and family that are not familiar with boats so they must have been asking... What is antifouling? Why are we sanding and painting the hull? Was it damaged?
Every boat, both if it's in fresh or salt water, will grow plants and barnacles and mussels on the hull if no treatment is applied to its surface.
Depending on the environment, the temperature, the antifoul applied... this growth will be faster or slower, but it always happens.
So it's a normal thing for any boat, to be put out of the water on a regular basis, pressure washed, sanded and painted again. Unfortunately, the only way to avoid things from growing is to apply toxic particles and/or chemicals that erode when moving, so the growing organisms won't stick to the hull. They are some innovative materials out there, but they are not affordable yet and don't work as well on slow-moving sailboats.
When we put Ambrym out of the water, we were happy to see that there were only some tiny barnacles, so whatever antifouling that had been used before, worked great. We could have just repainted on top. But we wanted to make it right and be sure of what was applied, so the only way to go was sanding as much as possible and starting from the beginning.
To be honest, we could have sanded even more, there were a lot of layers of old paint! But we did it until we had a nice smooth key surface.
We also wanted to check the condition and repair some chips, so after the sanding, there was quite a lot of work with the angle-grinder to clean those spots, as well as the steel beam on the bottom of the kill. Epoxy-filling followed, with some more sanding, and finally applying the antifouling.
After a lot of researching and making numbers, we decided to go with Seajet products. First a layer of primer, and then 2 coats of antifouling. I can tell you that that's a lot of painting!
But hopefully next year only light sand and 1 layer of paint will be necessary!
It's been a lot of work. We are exhausted. But it is a very satisfying one. She looks stunning!! It's a pity to put all that work under the water now!... but we are really looking for it.
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* Ferrocement boats can be covered with an epoxy coat to make the surface smooth. And some of this coating has come off after 40 years! We will tell you more about Ambrym's hull very soon
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