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Yards or companies that do barrier coating in Annapolis area?

5K views 35 replies 8 participants last post by  brak 
#1 ·
As the subject says - I am looking for companies or yards that do barrier coats in Annapolis area. While I am sure anyone with a sander can do it in principle, I am interested in your personal experience - who did it, and who did it well?
 
#3 ·
Why not do it yourself. If you sodablast the hull, to get it down to the gelcoat, barrier coating doesn't take very long to do.
 
#4 · (Edited)
Brak...

I'm sure there are many. The problem is how many are willing to do it right? You need to be asking some very specific questions and have the process written into the contract. In order for a barrier coat job to be done correctly there are a few very important things to consider and applies to epoxy based barrier coats.

1) ALL the paint must be removed. This means absolutely ZERO paint left on the bottom.

2) The hull, even though old and sanded/scraped, should then be thoroughly de-waxed using the proper de-waxing products.

3) The hull should be dry. This means no appreciable moisture. A barrier coat will seal in any moisture so you want it as dry as possible and this can take sometimes take months if your boat has lived in the water year round.

4) This job should ultimately be done INDOORS in a temp controlled environment.

5) The three plus coats of barrier coat and the first coat of bottom paint MUST be hot coated! Hot coating is the application of the next coat within a specified time window before the previous coat has fully kicked off but has achieved a specified level of cure before the next coat.

Hot coating ensures an actual chemical cross-linking between the coats of epoxy and the first coat of paint. This part of the job should be written into any contract and you should be on site to monitor this to make sure it happens. This prevents peeling and the need to wash amine blush off, and sand between coats!!! Even if you do wash and sand between coats you will NEVER get the bond you get with hot coating.

6) If your boat is a bolt on keel it should be properly stripped, primed and preped for the barrier coat. It should also be examined for any signs of leakage. If there are any signs of leaks the keel should be re-set at this point. If no leaks you should consider having the keel torqued and then the joint wrapped with glass & faired. This will prevent any future visible seams and will permanently seal the joint from the exterior.

I would advise your first coat of paint being a high quality copolymer ablative, of the same brand paint as the barrier coat used, Micron Extra or Micron 66 are great choices if using Interprotect 2000E, as many yards do. This first coat of paint can also be of a differing color than your final coat so you know when you need to re-paint. If this is all done properly you will most likely never see chunks of bottom paint flaking off your hull again..

Done right this is an EXPENSIVE undertaking to pay to have done. My boat is in the shop, as I type, for this very same thing. I have done four bottom jobs on my own boats, as described above, and have sworn it off for good. I now pay for it. The bottom job for our 36 footer will run about 5k.

This is what can happen when you don't apply a barrier coat correctly:


This is the moisture content of my hull as measured last week after sanding. It is about .25% - .50% moisture and this is considered well within the dry range for applying a barrier coat. Readings using an ElecroPhysics meter should be below 10 before barrier coating.
 
#19 · (Edited)
6)

I would advise your first coat of paint being a high quality copolymer ablative, of the same brand paint as the barrier coat used, Micron Extra or Micron 66 are great choices if using Interprotect 2000E, as many yards do. This first coat of paint can also be of a differing color than your final coat so you know when you need to re-paint. If this is all done properly you will most likely never see chunks of bottom paint flaking off your hull again..
Main Sail
I'm curious why you advise using an ablative first???
I am getting ready to apply the Interprotect 2000E. I just ordered a gallon of the Interlux bottomkote epoxy in black for my first coat - of course, it is a hard paint. My plan was to next apply two more coats of the Micron Extra (ablative).
 
#5 ·
maine sail, thanks for the post!

The hull of my boat is dry (as evidenced by both moisture meter readings and inspection of laminate, as I had a chance to drill a few holes :) ). That said, something happened today that underscored for me the importance of barrier coats (and, let me post here something that suggests, to me anyway, that even a really bad barrier coat is better than none - see the end of this message).

I am somewhat torn on whether to hire someone or do it myself. The cost is not an issue. I am well aware what this would cost, and would not mind paying for a quality job. That said, I know that other than myself, no one else would care enough to do it as well (I've dealt with a few contractors before, as I mentioned ;) ). It is a tough job though, and I am wondering if letting someone do it "good enough" is an easier way out.

I also do know that preparation (sanding/stripping or whatever method of paint removal that'd be chosen) is the hard part. I can roll barrier coat epoxy and time it like anyone else ;)

My boat is currently on land and been there for over 6 months, so this is probably as good a time as any to do it. If I launch now, I do not plan to be out of the water for a long period of time and doing barrier coat during a relatively short haul out is probably not optimal.

Now, here is the interesting point.
I had in the past sanded and inspected a number of areas of my boat's bottom. There is no barrier coat now - only multiple layers of paint. Under it I found a gelcoat in reasonable condition - a few cracks here and there, a bit of osmotic pinhole occasionally, but no blisters, generally high quality laminate underneath and overall everything looked good enough that I did not consider barrier coat to be necessary until now.

Today I removed the old ground plate, planning to replace it. Unlike other hull fittings, ground plates are not supposed to be sealed (according to installation manual) and this one was not. It was applied to bare hull and bolted, so water could (and did) enter behind it. Here is what I found there:

Larger image is here: http://images49.fotki.com/v1460/fileeoo3/15572/4/49507/6251129/bottom_plate.jpg

I am sure it is evident even from this cell phone photo that this is NOT a gelcoat in good condition. In fact, the entire area under the ground plate is completely cracked. Worse yet, there are a few holes in fiberglass surface where resin was completely washed out and all that remains are dry glass fibers. This area is in stark contrast to anywhere else on the bottom, including area directly adjacent to it (you can see white decent gelcoat just outside the edge of the ground plate). Some of this can be explained by water entering through bolt holes (which were also not sealed) and penetrating laminate sideways through the fibers. But this does not explain the entire area condition and the fact that the damage is specifically limited exactly to the shape of the ground plate.

Unless there is some electric weirdness going on (which I doubt) the only real difference here that I can see, is that this area of gelcoat was not covered by bottom paint. So - even ablative bottom paint provides a measure of protection to gelcoat, that is not available otherwise. While this may not be entirely scientific, I think barrier coat should work at least as well as ablative paint :)
 
#7 ·
Osprey has done some work for me as well as my brother, and I've heard mostly good things about them around the marina. The only complant I've heard is that they aren't the cheapest in town, but looking at their work, it's seems to be top notch.

My work with them was Awlgrip related, as well as my brother plus he just had them sodablast his bottom (he's doing the interprotect himself). Also today I meet with another T-37 owner who's boat was just Awlgriped by them, it looks to be an excellent job and the price wasn't outrageous.

Another option is to go down to Deltaville, VA, as I've heard nothing but praise about the quality of work as well as the pricing.
 
#11 ·
LOL... missed that... :) I'd be interested in seeing photos. :) Sodablasting is definitely the way to go if you're going to do this yourself. I wrote a good post on applying Interprotect 2000E previously:

Alternating the colors helps a lot with determining where you've painted, but it is also very useful for helping you coat the areas around the boat stands. For instance:

The first layer is gray, since the gelcoat is white, and you can paint right up to the boat stand pads. Then you paint a layer of white, and leave about a two-inch margin of gray paint around the pads... then paint a layer a gray and leave a four-inch margin around the pads or about two-inches of white and two inches of gray showing...and then finish with a layer of white-with a six-inch margin around the pads-with two inches of gray, two inches of white and two inches of gray.

Then when you move the boat stands, you can fill in the pads and layer the paint accordingly... adding gray to cover the white square left by the pad.. then white to cover the gray square, and so on.

Also, by alternating colors, you can see if someone has sanded through the barrier coat when you're prepping the boat for re-painting. If there's an area that is gray or grayish, they've sanded through at least the outermost layer of barrier coat. If you had all white, you wouldn't be able to tell if they had sanded down through the barrier coat as easily-if you had all gray, you could tell they sanded through the barrier coat...but not if they've sanded into it...

I hope this helps clear things up a bit.
 
#12 ·
Brak,

I have heard good things about Osprey, you may also try Osmotec in Annapolis and Steve's Yacht repair, also in Annapolis. I researched this topic extensively a few years ago, and decided to try my hand at it first before I dropped $12,000 ;) So far so good.
 
#13 ·
Thanks guys!

I am leaning towards hiring soda-blasting company to clean up the bottom, and then doing the actual painting myself. That way I would get the hard stuff outsourced to someone with proper tools, and get to paint the bottom the way I like (and, presumably, save a bit of cash too). Of course that means I am not getting to sail for a while longer, thats ok for a good cause though.
 
#15 ·
Not if it is done properly. When I had the three hulls on my boat sodablasted, I had about 95%+ of the actually bottom paint removed down to the gelcoat. :)
 
#18 ·
I don't have photos of it, but the majority of that <5% was the area around the waterline... and I do have three waterlines to deal with... :) If it were a monohull, it would have been significantly less to deal with, since there'd be far less water line to deal with.
 
#22 ·
I had read a couple other posts where this was done. Guess I should have questioned them. I'm certainly not ready to debate hard vs. ablative for a first coat and I can see your point but here was my logic.

1. Previous paint (5 or 6 layers) was completely flaking off in areas due to poor adhesion. Don't want that to ever happen again (guess that goes without saying).
2. I had planned to use only hard paint. I want to be able to clean the bottom and I'm concerned about cleaning through the ablative. A hard first coat will ensure there is always paint on the bottom. If I end up not liking ablative, I can always revert back to hard since it's ok to apply ablative over hard but not the other way around.
3. Bottomkote epoxy is half the price of Micron Extra.
4. I like the idea of epoxy paint on top of epoxy barrier coat.

It already shipped and returning it will be very hard. So I'll go ahead as planned. I did check with my Interlux rep. on going this route and to get a recoat time (micron over bottomkote). He didn't seem to have a problem.
 
#23 · (Edited)
Harbin..

I had read a couple other posts where this was done.
There's lots of misguided preferences and lots of old wives tales on the net..

1. Previous paint (5 or 6 layers) was completely flaking off in areas due to poor adhesion. Don't want that to ever happen again (guess that goes without saying).
Sadly after you finish all your HARD work, and apply a hard epoxy paint, you will eventually experience the same exact thing. Epoxy paint is NOT epoxy like West Systems or Interprotect 2000 are. It is a paint with a particular epoxy ingredient that is it. Many paints are epoxy based like Easy Poxy but it does not make them anything like epoxy resins. As such these epoxy paints are not water proof. The barrier coat is significantly more waterproof than an epoxy paint and when water gets between the two it will eventually begin to lift it. In my 35+ years of boating I have never not seen a hard paint eventually begin to peel..

2. I had planned to use only hard paint. I want to be able to clean the bottom and I'm concerned about cleaning through the ablative.
Many thousands of boats who use ablatives also clean their bottoms for racing. We wash Cordelia, the Ericson I race on, twice per year only to get a slight slime off it. If you apply the suggested coats in the suggested manner you will not likely be washing through it, we never have.

A hard first coat will ensure there is always paint on the bottom.
Yes but only until it peels or becomes ineffective. Most hard paints are ineffective after a haul out, even Interlux Ultra (this is a hard paint) can not be hauled and re-launched. No matter how much you want them to work they are toast. If the paint becomes ineffective due to time in water or a haul out you have to ask yourself, "what is the point of having a hard paint under an ablative". It will be as effective as the barrier coat after the first season meaning it will repel next to nothing. It is a total waste of time & your hard earned money if you are thinking it will offer any protection if your ablative layers wash away. If you have sailed it more than a season or you have dry stored it for any period of time Bottomkote is dead.

If I end up not liking ablative, I can always revert back to hard since it's ok to apply ablative over hard but not the other way around.
This is the only benefit, with a big caveat. In order to get back to the layer of hard paint you'll need to fully sand off the ablative you are moving away from. This is much easier said than done and might as well be another full strip. Unfortunately, I have yet to meet anyone who has actually done a bottom job, switched to an ablative, and wanted to go back to a hard paint unless they were a very competitive racer and could not burnish the ablative to their liking. Perhaps they are out there but I have yet to meet one.

3. Bottomkote epoxy is half the price of Micron Extra.
Yesand but its also half the paint. I would hope you ordered Bottomkote Classic as Bottomkote is a soft sloughing paint. Both Bottomkote Classic (hard) and Bottomkote (sloughing) are SINGLE season paints. This means they are rendered useless after haul and re-launch. USELESS !!! Wear away your ablative paint after a stint of winter storage and your Bottomkote is as useless as the barrier coat or gel coat is so why have it at all? The gray or white barrier coat also makes a great but equally as useless tracer coat...

Multi-season copolymers like Micron CSC or Extra or Ultima SR or West marine PCA are true multi-season paints. You DO NOT need to repaint copolymer ablatives until you hit your tracer color. If it takes three seasons before you hit your tracer color you just saved a TON of money over Bottomkote Classic!! If the tracer color is a copolymer ablative it will also be an efficacious layer, when you get there, not rendered useless by time or exposure to oxygen.

I paint my boat roughly every two years so that actually makes Micron Extra LESS money than a yearly paint that has become ineffective yet still stuck to your hull as a useless dead layer of added weight..

Please DO NOT get hung up on the price. Multi-season copolymers are CHEAPER, much cheaper, in the long run. If our current boat had not been painted first with a useless hard paint and was done with ablatives the last time she was stripped I would be saving 5k+ right now on a bottom job (the PO did this not me)!!

4. I like the idea of epoxy paint on top of epoxy barrier coat.
Again they are NOT the same thing!! The only thing they share is the word epoxy. Go buy some appliance epoxy spray paint at you local hardware store and compare it to West Systems resin or Interprotect 2000E. Appliance paint has about as much in common with epoxy resins as does Bottomkote Classic..

It already shipped and returning it will be very hard. So I'll go ahead as planned. I did check with my Interlux rep. on going this route and to get a recoat time (micron over bottomkote). He didn't seem to have a problem.
I am trying to help you SAVE money in the long haul. Using this method will only serve to have you back here in a few years saying "I should have listened to you guys"..;)

I will say this again.. There is no benefit to applying a hard paint over a new barrier coat! I know this because I have "been there, done that" and learned my lesson.

Personally I'd return the Bottomkote.. West PCA is basically the same paint as Ultima SR, its made by Petitt, and it goes on sale every spring for about $159.00 per gallon. Interlux ACT is also another excellent ablative for sailboats as it sloughs at slower speeds than does the Micron line. For Micron you really need about 7-8 knots for sloughing. ACT will leave less build up and can be hauled and relaunched. Unfortunately it wears away or ablades faster so need a new coat every season.

Hamilton Marine Pricing:

Bottomkote Classic = $129.99 X 2 Seasons = $259.98

Extra = $229.00 X 2 seasons = $229.00

or

Interlux ACT = $157.99 it wears away faster so you'll likely need it every season

West Marine PCA = $159.99 (sale) X 2 Seasons = $159.00

Extra & PCA are cheaper but you need to look at the whole cost equation to realize it..
 
#25 ·
IF the holes the fasteners went through weren't sealed, then water could have easily entered the laminate through the raw fiberglass, by wicking along the glass fibers there. Then small amounts of water freezing and thawing could have caused the damage to the gelcoat you're seeing.
 
#26 ·
I did think about that.

But if that is the case, I would expect damage to be radiating in circle from the holes, as water wicks pretty much evenly (or perhaps slightly more downward). Instead, it is specifically limited to exactly the area under the ground plate. Since distance from holes to middle of plate (or to vertcal edges) is more than distance to top and bottom edges, if damage would have radiated that way I'd expect the circle of damage to protrude up and down from the holes beyond the immediate ground plate square. It does not. Also there is more damage in some areas farther away from the holes (but still under the ground plate) than it is in their immediate vicinity.

The fact that it is so precisely limited to ground plate shape really seems to invalidate that theory (at least not by itself, may be as a contributing factor).
 
#31 ·
Those may not be osmotic blisters, but gel coat voids, where there was some contamination between the gelcoat and the first layer of matte. That's certainly what they look like. Osmotic blisters would be weeping.
 
#33 · (Edited)
Maine Sail
Like I said, I'm not here to debate - I'm here to learn and share. Almost all of what you say makes good sense - wish I had your advice before ordering the Bottomkote (classic). Also, I do appreciate your detailed response. I have been sailing for 45 years but I have only been working on boat bottoms for 5 months. Looks like I'll be looking for something to do with an unopened gallon of Bottomkote. Maybe I can talk a local merchant into taking it of my hands in exchange for a can of red Micron Extra (and the difference in price). In my defense, I DID do an enormous amount of reading - here and elsewhere and I'm normally very skeptical of what I read in forums. I'm a little surprised at Chef's post above since I was unaware that any ablative was made in black - I know Micron Extra isn't.
Brak - please forgive me for the diversion away from your topic.
Thanks again to all.
 
#35 · (Edited)
Black Micron Extra is available..

Maine Sail
Like I said, I'm not here to debate - I'm here to learn and share.
Sorry was not trying to debate but rather save you some future headache. if you perceived my advice as a debate I'm sorry for that..

I'm a little surprised at Chef's post above since I was unaware that any ablative was made in black - I know Micron Extra isn't.

Yes Micron Extra, CSC and ACT are all made in Black. The West Marine product number for Micron Extra in black gallons is 1146786.

West Marine PCA Gold also comes in black as does Pettit Ultima SR..
 
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