Bottom painting wooden dinghy

[fregata]

The time has come to re-paint my wooden dinghy (bottom and topsides).

It currently has an ablative bottom paint, but I am considering switching to a hard paint or some alternative. It is easy enough to haul the dinghy and flip it over to clean periodically. The ablative paint tends to make a mess and I might want to carry the dinghy upside down on the foredeck in the future and worry that it will turn the foot of my genoa blue.

Here's the kicker, all the hard bottom paints I can find appear to only be sold by the gallon which at ~$300 is a steep price.

What are people using to coat the bottoms of their dinghies?

[Kettlewell]

I use leftovers from painting my big boat. Ablative works for me.

[rslifkin]

How much time does the dinghy spend in the water typically? If it's not more than a day or 2 at a time, I'd probably skip the bottom paint and just clean it off when you pull it out.

Keep in mind, many hard paints start to lose effectiveness with repeated haul / launch cycles unless you scuff it up before it goes back in the water.

[fregata]

The big boat gets ablative and would normally use the leftovers but am considering moving away from it.

I can definitely manage to haul it out every few days to give it a scrub. I just recall reading something about the topside paint not being suitable for remaining submerged and potentially peeling or flaking as a result. What would be a suitable one-stop-shop solution?

[Jammer]

I use topsides paint (awlgrip) for the bottom of the nesting dinghies I have and don't leave them in the water long enough for that to be a problem.

On my heavier 14' one-piece dinghy, which is towed and stays in the water longer, I use Trilux 33. It is available in quarts and comes in white. I have the sky blue which is OK. It is an ablative paint and does leave marks on stuff but it's not difficult to clean up. The blue is non staining, white would probably be better.

[Ryban]

I’m just about finished building our wooden dinghy, and puzzled over whether we should bottom paint it or not. Ultimately I decided not to based on experience of others. I used a 2 part poly from Eipifanes, which like awlgrip, is officially designed not to be submerged for long periods. But as long as you don’t leave the dinghy in the water for more than a handful of days or a week at a time, you should be ok.

Sailing Florence has the same dinghy that I believe is painted with a 2 pack paint. They just completed a 7 year circumnavigation and their dinghy paint looked pretty good still.

The other reason I didn’t want to bottom paint is that we will be storing our dinghy on deck, nested upside down. So we’d be in contact with the bottom paint frequently.

[PippaB]

There are a number of epoxy mastic coatings that are intended for submersion and work well as "paint" for this application. They are, however, nearly as dear as antifouling paint.

Outside the US I swear by Jotamastic 90 for dinghy bottom and lining the engine room. It does not list wood as an application substrate, but has lasted years on our wood dinghy that was epoxy coated when built. Very abrasion resistant when dragging the dinghy up the beach.

In the US I have found Benjamin Moore Corotech V160 to be similar, but do not have nearly the same level of experience with the product. If buying this product you definitely need a commercial paint buying account you can borrow from someone, the list price will buy you a new dinghy.

These do not provide "yacht-like" finishes, but they can look pretty good (depends on your standards), especially for surfaces that get abused (or immersed). Quite frankly, do not understand why they are not use more in the industry - they are used extensively in the commercial marine-craft world.