Eons ago, we were heading for Europe, to sail our new Northeast 38 toy, that I had pretty much bought sight-unseen for $15K- fully equipped, in Denmark. The intent was to find out what sort of problems I had bought, fix them / or get them fixed, before planning to sail it back to the States the following year. Our T-L 29 was in the water her normal spot at Fort Rachel Marine at Mystic, CT, and I left our Dyer 7'-9" dinghy tied up alongside the mother ship while we were gone. The Dyer dink didn't have any anti-fouling paint on the bottom. We were gone for about two months. When we were back in Connecticut again, we headed to Mystic to go sailing. After bailing out all the rain water that had collected during our absence, I untied the dinghy, to moor it astern, it felt very sluggish. What gives? I hauled it up on the dock, and was dumbfounded to see the bottom of the dinghy totally covered with a thick layer of barnacles. They had found a new happy home during our absence, and had been fruitful and multiplied.... I spent the next several hours with a paint scraper, laboriously removing the barnacles - large and small - and making a large mess on the dock, before washing them back into the water, for the edification of the sea gulls and cormorants. I was so busy kicking myself for my stupidity, that I didn't think of weighing or measuring the volume of barnacles removed, but I assure you the whole bottom of the dinghy, every square inch of it, was totally cover with barnacles; some as big as a dime. A wild guess on my part would be about 30 lbs of barnacles that I removed. Let me assure you, the little crustaceans hold on the fiberglass bottom was extremely tenacious. My removal efforts were just a tad under using dynamite and blasting, and you could see the little round areas where each had firmly attached itself to the Dyer hull as they were chiseled away. My conclusion: If a boat is moving - as on a cruise - your chances of growing barnacles diminish. They like their quite undisturbed sex, such as I offered with the bottom of our dinghy. A moving boat makes it more difficult for them to attach themselves. Our T-L 29 had anti-fouling paint and we never had a problem with barnacles, other than on the propeller shaft or propeller blades themselves (that were unpainted). A few weeks cruising shouldn't present a barnacle problem, but beware if the boat just sits at a salt water Marina and doesn't move for weeks; and it doesn't have anti-fouling paint on the bottom. Then barnacles will cry "Whoopy, we've found a new home, let the sex orgy start" and you will have a big problem. The next time I was gone for a time, I left the dinghy overturned on the foredeck. One lesson learned was enough for me. Connie