Wednesday, March 6, 2013

Clean Bottom

The other day I hired some divers to clean the bottom of our boat. I was a little nervous about the cost because after I told the guy our boat has been in this slip since last October, he mentioned it may cost quite a bit more than I had anticipated. He decided to charge me by the hour, figuring it would take his divers at least two hours to scrape all the junk off.
What I didn't expect was the divers coming up on the dock after twenty minutes asking me what bottom paint I used. They said the paint was basically just a little mucky, and all the muck came off without scraping. They were amazed at the protection after all this time. I was also told that the paint is good for another year! What the hell. I bought the cheapest stuff I could find at West Marine, and I got about thirty dollars off each gallon, plus my bonus coupons. Wow. I used the CPP Plus ablative. Nothing special, so I thought. OK then. Feeling pretty good about all that.

I also had the zincs replaced, and I gave him two of them, but he returned one saying the old one was still pretty good, and the shaft and prop were spotless. I don't understand why, but I'll take it. The prop just had some fleetwax on it for protection. Nothing on the shaft.
I imagine once the water gets a bit warmer I'll have some proper critters hanging on below the water line.






Cheers!
P

4 comments:

  1. Whoa! I hope we never see our boat's bottom looking like the one above! That's not your boat?! At least not this time around. =)

    As you know, we just posted our haul-out expenses, so I'm glad to hear that your boat's bottom looked so good! We think (and hope) that we used good paint and that our boat's bottom won't require much sanding once we take her out after over 3 years. A diver comes and cleans her every 6 weeks and changes the anodes whenever necessary ... he says it looks great.

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  2. Could you imagine pulling your boat and finding it looking like that? We never had to worry about cold Lake Ontario. We would get a little slimy once in a while, and some folks do not use any bottom paint at all! We never thought to include the cost of hull cleaning in our budget. A little pricey. Might be time to get SCUBA certified.

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  3. Did you overcoat VC17 or some other paint?

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    Replies
    1. Hey Mike. How are things up north? You store inside this year? No overcoat, except the original ablative that was there when we bought her. I have been using the CPP since then. Pretty amazing, considering the time in the brine.

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