Bottom cleaning

[mwrohde]

The boat is a 27 foot monohull (no rail mounted grill) that lives exclusively in fresh water. It's been about 18 months since it's been out of the water. The bottom was painted at that time. Now, the bottom is covered in snot.

I've worked a bit on the bottom with a brush on a long handle. The snot comes off pretty easily, as well as clouds of bottom paint.

Is this the correct procedure and expected results?

Thanks,

Matt

[MoonSailer]

I scuba or snorkleand use a soft sponge to clean my boat's bottom. no hard growths since I moved it from the coast to a lake. It is now almost 4 years since the last bottom paint. I ideal is to scrub just hard enough to remove the slime and as little paint as possible. On my lake I get a very dark slime that really slows boat speed. But it is easy to remove. It takes me less than an hour using scuba. A little longer with a snorkle. Much of it can be cleaned without going underwater. Cleaning the keel is the hardest without scuba as it is deepest and requires more trips to the surface to breath for the amount of cleaning time per breath.

[camaraderie]

Sounds like you have applied an ablative bottom paint and you are scrubbing it off along with the gunk. 18 months is a pretty good run so youare about due for a renewal anyway. Next time you haul...get the remaining paint off and use a hard bottom paint that will stand up to scrubbing instead of an ablative.

[sander06]

Count yourself lucky that you're in freshwater and not salt. No barnacles to clean off and no sharks to eat the cleaner.

[JohnBoelte]

Originally Posted by sander06

Count yourself lucky that you're in freshwater and not salt. No barnacles to clean off and no sharks to eat the cleaner.

As much as I dislike the short summertime/boating season in Indiana, I've found that not having to worry about being eaten by the marine life has a lot of virtue.