Hard or Ablative Bottom Paint?

Hard is by far more effective at limiting growth and lasting longer than ablative. Interlux ultra is excellent hard paint and I have one boat in South Florida that goes 3 years between bottom jobs and is still very effective.

Micron grows algae and barnacles the first month after you launch it. If you insist on ablative go with Seahawk cu-kote. You can always put ablative directly over hard if you don't like the hard, but you can never put hard over ablative paint.

Hard. I've never had ablative and not planning on changing. Interlux Ultra is a good choice I think. It's personal choices but we've had excellent service out of hard. Now, we do maintain it very diligently with bottom cleaning monthly and as frequent as every three weeks during the summer. No hard scrubbing required.

Prefer where....there isn't a best universally. That's where I think they go wrong. We talk to people who talk about cleaning the bottoms of their boats once a year and finding very little to clean (some in the PNW), we clean a dozen times a year. They say Prop Speed is unnecessary. We find it a tremendous help. Use, frequency and time of haulouts, many other things come into play as well. We have a routine that works well for us, where we are.

There was a recent test of 20 paints in 13 different locations in the UK. From brackish muddy creeks to ice cool lochs. The winning paint is the main one we've been using for years, Seajet.

Seajet 033 Shogun is a hard paint we put on boats even up to 70knts and have never had a problem with it, even in our heavy fouling area. For a white finish, we use Seajet 034 Emperor, as it contains no copper it doesn't discolour and go bluey-green like others.

I think they are looking for a decent US importer at the moment.

http://www.seajetpaint.com/en/products/antifouling/seajet-033-shogun/

Dave. You linked to your file instead of uploading it. We can't reach your personal computer or, if we are capable, I don't really think you want us doing to.

I have a client ready for a new bottom job and he has been researching Hempel. I have been copied on the correspondence and they seem to have excellent customer support.

Any Hempel users? Note, the "el" - I am not asking about your personal life.

Judy

Oops. Hope a Mod can delete that. Thanks for pointing out my utter uselessness with PDFs. Hateful things, can't get on with them, they disappear into mystery files.

My boat cruises 30 tops out 36 50' Ablative is my choice. No buildup of annual coats to be reckoned with. I put one coat on every two years and use the boat about 100 hours per year here in NY Nice clean smooth bottom. Going on 17 years now.

Click on "Upload a File" and it will allow you to upload the PDF as you intended.