See full version: Which Bottom Paint Should I Use
There are many different antifouling coatings, making it hard to choose the paint that’s right for your boat and your budget. Some coatings work better in different locations, including fresh or salt water. Some are more environmentally friendly than others, and some cost more based on the amount and type of biocide, and the protection they provide.
Ablative paint is designed to gradually wear away as water flows beneath the hull, either from use or from the movement of tides and currents. Fresh biocide is exposed as the paint layers wear away, preventing marine fouling organisms from attaching to the surface. Some ablative paint formulas are for multi-season use, and some are effective for only a single season. Also, ablative bottom paint can be copper-based or copper-free, and water-based or solvent-based. For most ablative paints to work effectively, motion is required, so this paint is best if you use your gets frequent use.
If you use your sailboat or power boat frequently, ablative bottom paint is a great choice because it’s most effective when the boat moves through the water to release fresh biocide. If you don’t use your boat as often and it spends a lot of time at the doc or on the mooring, your best bet would be a self-polishing copolymer paint that’s effective whether the boat is moving or not. In addition, brief boating seasons are suitable for a single-season antifouling paint, but for a longer boating season, it can be more effective and economical to apply a multi-season bottom paint. If you trailer your boat, a harder ablative antifouling paint that can withstand trailering and beaching might be the way to go. here
Changing wouldn’t be cheap, but we decided to do it. Sticking with ablative and paying $100 every few weeks for a bottom cleaning (or spending a day doing it ourselves) wasn’t cheap either. Based on Derek’s advice, and the experience of my podcast co-host Nica Waters and also Behan Gifford of Sailing Totem, we decided to go with Trinidad SR. more
We know that we’re taking a risk with doing it the way we did. We might have made a mistake and “wasted” $1,000 instead of saving $2,000. But that’s how things work in the real world. We do the best we can with imperfect information. We made a decision and will see how it plays out over the next couple of years.
We opted to have the bottom aggressively pressure washed, and then heavily sanded to remove as much of the old paint as was reasonable — but that did not take it all the way back to gelcoat except in high-wear areas. Then we had Pettit Tie Coat applied to the whole bottom. The first coat of bottom paint — in our case, Trinidad SR — is applied while the Tie Coat is still tacky so that there is a chemical bonding between the two. [links]
The basic issue in switching from ablative to hard paint is that the ablative paint can still try to wear away under the hard paint and will take the hard layers with it. If there are years of ablative paint build up, the recommendation is to soda blast the hull back to gelcoat. But soda blasting is expensive — around here, in the neighborhood of $3,000 for a boat the size of Barefoot Gal. And that’s in addition to the cost of the haul out, the paint and the labor. Another option would be to sand back to gelcoat, but around here that’s more expensive than soda blasting. here
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There is not a lot of empirical data about how much faster a burnished Teflon bottom is over a well prepared copolymer paint. So the answer is "yes, it's faster," but with your boat, your budget, and your application there’s no way to predict that you may be 5% or 10% or half a knot faster.
Dry sailing for smaller boats is very popular. Fair the bottom and leave it unpainted or put on an underwater epoxy paint. As long as you don't store the boat in the water for more than a couple of days during a regatta there shouldn't be any growth. Most dinghies are dry sailed. Many smaller boats kept at clubs or marinas with a crane have this option, though there may be a cost to haul and launch. here
You will find very few non-racers who take the time and effort to apply the fastest bottom paints. The cost/benefit/effort analysis doesn't show a reasonable payback for what you get.
Most sailors aren't taking their boats to world-class regatta venues, they're taking off for weekends and vacations and maybe doing the club series on Wednesday nights or the annual regatta. Most of those boats are not going through the expense and effort for a competitive racing finish.
Without requiring a degree in Computational Fluid Dynamics to explain it, a rough bottom is slower. More friction is slower - think about rubbing your hand across a carpeted floor versus a glass table top with a little oil spilled on it. Which is easier? Now imagine you're playing with a toy boat on either surface. If you push the boat, which one will be easier to push? Which might even keep sliding a little if you let it go?
In a word: friction. Friction causes turbulence and drag