Yards or companies that do barrier coating in Annapolis area?

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.

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