Keeping bottom of dinghy Clean

[landonshaw]

I’m in Grenada and my dinghy is in the water all the time. Boat on a mooring, dinghy in Marina. Does anyone have a good way to keep the dinghy bottom clean? Just got done scraping.

There was a post about putting the dinghy on a small swimming pool to keep out of the water. Not sure how easy that is to set up, but someone is thinking.

Any suggestions? Even if it is an easy way to put the dinghy on the small pool.

[dwedeking2]

A number of boats around here have a float platform tied up next to their boats, this gets the dinghy or kayak out of the water. I just run a scraper around the bottom of the dinghy whenever I go for a swim.

[chrisr]

suppose there is no reason why a dinghy cannot be antifouled ?

cheers,

[Jammer]

What kind of dinghy? People who use wood or fiberglass dinghies, and tow, and keep them in the water most of the time put on antifouling paint. For RIB you could at least put antifouling on the rigid portion of the hull

[wingless]

My dinghy is either out of the water on the boat, or out of the water on a floating dock.

[Tetepare]

Being in fresh water, our dinghy was always covered with zebra mussels. Three years ago we painted the bottom with anti-fouling (vc17 in our case) and no more mussels, no more algae.

Both Fiberglas hull and pontoons were painted.

[landonshaw]

We have an aluminum bottom dinghy. I also use antifoulant made specifically for dinghies with aluminum bottoms. I try to brush off when we swim also. Just a continuous chore. I guess one that goes along with a boat.

[a64pilot]

I keep mine out of the water, I looked into antifouling and decided against it. Many say it makes a mess and will rub off on everything, but as I keep mine in davits I think it would have been OK.

In order to have a floating dock or whatever, you can’t really cruise, so that was out, plus of course your just now fouling the dock. Pretty much came down to taking it out of the water every afternoon or antifouling it.

[sck5]

This is a common problem in the Eastern Carib - My solution was to wait until the dink got too slow and then I took it out of the water and cleaned the bottom with a bleach solution. You could also ask the guys at the nearest haulout if they would powerwash it for 10 bux. I did that once in Antigua - easist way if its possible

[DMCantor]

It's a very good idea to lift the dinghy out of the water from a security perspective. Before we got davits, we used a halyard. Bonus -- this is very effective at preventing growth on the bottom.


Anti-fouling on the inflatable tubes simply flakes off as the material flexes.

[zengirl]

I'm using one quart of TotalBoat Inflatable Boat Paint ($54 amazon) mixed with 3 oz of 1 Million Scoville ($20 amazon) Do not use any other hot sauce. This pure extract with nothing else in it and it is the only one that works. People have said they tried it and it didn't work and that is because the didn't buy the pure stuff.

[Scubaseas]

Solvent based anti-fouling with universal flex agent added. Flex won't work with water based paints but seems OK on solvent based ones. It's available on Amazon or from auto body supply stores. Common application is on urethane or fiberglass parts like bumper covers, etc.

[singlespeed]

Pull the dinghy out of the water at every opportunity. Beach sand makes an excellent non-polluting scrub for your dinghy bottom.

[Alan j]

They make bottom paint for rubber dinghies. It makes a world of difference.

[fatherchronica]

We have a 12’ plywood dinghy with 2 Lexan panels either side of the keel. We cleaned it by flipping it on a beach and wiping vinegar on it with a sponge and after a few minutes scraping off the growth as fast as my arms can move with an old credit card. Even the hardest growth released it’s grip immediately. We would leave our dinghy, “Mintberry Crunch” in the water sometimes for 3 weeks if we liked where we were only raising it out of the water with halyards at night. We can always tell by the Lexan ports how dirty the bottom is getting.