Glen-L.com

I'm near painting the bottom of my zip, and I had a question I was hoping to get some feedback on.

I probably won't have my boat in the water next summer(although I can dream..) so it will be in my backyard out of the water for a long time. Additionally, I plan to trailer it for at least a season or two until my kids are old enough to go out in it more regularly. When this happens, I'll probably keep it at the marina at the end of my street so that I can conveniently go out on the river after work.

If I do not put anti-fouling bottom paint on now, but instead paint with a topside paint as another thread suggests, what kind of prep work will I need to do in order to put bottom paint on later? Can I paint over the topside paint, or will I need to strip it down to the epoxy?

The "river" is really more an estuary to the Atlantic where I am, so it is effectively salt water. Is it a problem to not have anti-fouling paint on a trailered boat in this environment?

Any help would be appreciated.

-Bill

I'm the guest. Must have forgotten to log in.

-Bill

Bill, this is a fairly new topic for me, too. But I've asked questions about this on this and other forums. So as I understand it, if you plan on trailering the boat a good percentage of the time, an antifouling paint is just a waste of money. The reason is that when you remove the boat from the water, the antifouling paint starts drying out and the copper or other antifouling compound starts oxidizing virtually immediately. When that happens, it loses its effectiveness.

Antifouling paints are best suited for boats that remain in the water throughout the season, but even then, if they get hauled out onto the hard, they'll need to be repainted at the beginning of the following season. Therefore, when you have a boat that gets trailered, there just isn't any point in using the stuff. The alternative is to chamois the boat off from the topsides down each time you bring it out of the water while the algea and other "slime" is still damp. But HEY, I always did that anyway. It just made me feel better and I didn't know that I was doing the right thing all along.

But, you know, I got to thinking about it and it occured to me that none of the trailer production FRP boats on the market, from jet skis to cigarettes, had any kind of antifoul paint on the hull. That would tell you something right there.

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