If I left it at a marina that would be a salt water environment. The barnacles down here in South Texas are voracious. I think they eat the bottom paint. I am just concerned with potential blisters. My last, last boat was an S2 and it developed terminal blisters even with bottom paint when it was left in the salt water marina in Kemah Texas. It did not have a barrier coat on it under the bottom paint. The survey did not mention any and I did not attach any great importance to that. In the course of a year the dime sized blisters grew to almost fist sized. Yikes!!!!! Tom B On Mon, May 25, 2015 at 11:13 AM, Conbert Benneck <chbenneck@gmail.com> wrote:
On 5/25/2015 10:41 AM, Thomas Buzzi wrote:
Hi Tom,
Are you talking fresh water or salt water at the marina?
If you are at a marina on afresh water lake, you shouldn't have any problems, other than a bit of slim that may adhere to the bottom paint.
In salt water, your main problem is keeping barnacles from adhering to the hull. That is what bottom paint aims to do - keep the barnacles from attaching themselves to your hull.
I made the big mistake of leaving my Dyer 7'-9" hard dinghy in the salt water at our marina for about a month, while we were on a trip to Colorado by car.
On returning from our trip, I bailed the rain water out of the dinghy, and we headed from Mystic to Block Island. Our big boat felt sluggish. At Block Island we rowed from our anchorage to the dinghy dock. The dinghy rowed and felt as if it had a sea anchor attached to the stern.
At the dinghy dock I pulled the dinghy out of the water, and discovered the whole bottom - no bottom paint on the dinghy since it mostly lived on the dock except for our cruises and weekend sails - to be one uninterrupted carpet of very happy dime size barnacles on every inch of the immersed hull.
The dinghy hadn't moved for a month, and that was nirvana for the barnacles.
I had to use a putty knife and spent the next two hours laboriously removing my little friends, and then flushing the mess I made back into the water.
Connie
Recently cleaned off the old bottom paint from my M17. Got down to the gelcoat which had a waxy sheen to it. Lightly sanded the sheen and applied two coats of bottom paint directly to the gelcoat. The boat is 35 years old plus, had no sign of 2000e barrier coat and had no evidence of blistering. Am I in trouble for not applying a coat of 2000e before the bottom paint? My plan was to use the boat off the trailer with the hull being wet for no longer than a week at a time and mostly day sailing. If I do decide to moor the boat at a marina though would blistering become a problem? I had an M17 back in early 1980's which was a 1974 model and that did not show any signs of blistering either even though I had it at a marina for over a year at a time.
Tom B, M17, "AS IS"