Careening

[dave]

When I give clinics the very first thing that I stress is that NOTHING I'm going to say matters if the boat doesn't have a VERY clean, smooth bottom! The best crew in the world with the fastest sails on the planet will get their butts kicked while sailing ANY boat with even a slightly fouled or in any way less than almost perfect bottom. Conversely, one of the main reasons that the hotshots ARE hotshots is just because they refuse to sail the boat in any other condition besides having a perfect [or close to it] bottom, along with templated and faired blades. Winning tactics are fairly easy with great boat speed and great boat speed is fairly easy to gain with a fair, clean and smooth bottom. People tend to rationalize that things which they don't want to do don't REALLY matter that much. All to often it's these same folks who buy new rags every season or two but don't practice and don't maintain the bottom of the boat who are also usually whining post race about their poor race results.

Yes grasshopper............................................. it makes THAT much difference!

[Gerry Connolly]

I'm a salt water sailor (Nova Scotia), the water in the Northumberland Straight gets up to 75 degrees F in August, so all kinds of mostly slimy things start to grow on the bottom, board and rudder. It's fairly easy to brush or scrub it off just by getting in the water with a snorkel, a mask, a brush or a scrubber.
Anyhow, VC 17 or the like just don't cut it, you would be scrubbing every 2nd day. Been using ablative paints like Pettit Horizons or International Micron. In Canada, for whatever reason, slime additives are not allowed in bottom paint, and so we don't have the variety like you have south of the border.
I have a few questions. How do you apply ablative bottom paint (any brand) smoothly without the orange peel finish? Anyone having success with other types of bottom paints, both in terms of performance and application, and how do you do the centerboard if your launching off a trailer? Also, how do you paint the bottom when its on a trailer, ie under the bunks? (I use to keep my boat stored on a cradle with adjustable screw pads and am considering lifting it back on next spring so I can give it a decent paint job next spring.)

[dave]

I paint with the boat on pads and the keel lowered. To get almost ANY bottom paint to go on smoothly it must be thinned and sprayed, but even then ablatives tend to mildly orange peel, so I still have to lightly wet sand them before I launch the boat. My experience with ablatives [in fresh water at least] is that none of them do that great a job on slime and all of them need regular cleaning to stay REALLY clean and smooth. This means that you're removing paint each time but for the time that the paint last the bottom is in pretty good shape. Not exactly what they claim but 99.9% of marketing is spin, lies and nice photos!

In 75 degree water it should be much better. On my home lake I've seen 99.9 degrees on my fishfinder out in the middle, 3/5 mile from land and in 32' of water.................................................................................... yes, it's a BRUTAL fouling environment!!!!! Having said that, the boats still get dirty all through the winter with water temps as low as the low 40's!