Test new kind of antifouling, silicone based

[lateral]

According to the international rep two cruising boats had Intersleek 1100sr put on them
professionally down here. One was happy one was not. Both spent a season cruising the Pacific is.
PIA to put on & very expensive. Dunno how you get on overcoating?
Not the holy grail.
This was the latest iteration of release coatings from International ie Hydrophobic and hydrophilic combined. Essentially, hydrophilic by the PEG outer chains and the reverse
inner PDMS. IIRC. Some complex chemistry require to get the PEG to tag along.

Protein based adhesive doesnt stick well to water layer carried on outer Hydrophillic layer. Any speed over 3knts supposed to wipe clean.
Good luck with your test.

I guess you need to define what you expect from your AF.

[billgewater]

Look at it from the barnacles and algae's viewpoint. They have been evolving for hundreds of millions of years in the most diverse and complex environments imaginable.
It is going to take some lateral thinking beyond the crudity of poisoning to "beat" the genetic developments these organisms have. To be effective the usual metal based (tin, copper, zinc) compounds have to be soluble or easily absorbed into the organic environment. The action simply means that these compounds are intended to be depleted. The effectiveness has a built in limited lifetime.)

I suspect we are using the wrong companies to develop better products because they are not the best experts in the area at all. The best experts are probably genetic engineers who may find means to stop the growth in marine organisms (although there are literally millions of types!).
I have also been somewhat perplexed to observe that some rocks and sand do not seem to have any marine growth on them at all. Some granite is often devoid of marine growth at the littoral zone. Maybe we should be looking at the environment that the marine growth comes from.

Maybe the physical nature of the product rather than the chemical may lead to success e.g. slippery, gelatinous like silicons, insoluble to the chemicals used to "latch on" by marine growth etc

From a paint company's viewpoint the current outrageously expensive paint products requiring replacement every few years must be a gold mine. Why would they want a better product on the market?

[Dave_S]

Originally Posted by billgewater

Look at it from the barnacles and algae's viewpoint. They have been evolving for hundreds of millions of years in the most diverse and complex environments imaginable.
It is going to take some lateral thinking beyond the crudity of poisoning to "beat" the genetic developments these organisms have. To be effective the usual metal based (tin, copper, zinc) compounds have to be soluble or easily absorbed into the organic environment. The action simply means that these compounds are intended to be depleted. The effectiveness has a built in limited lifetime.)

I suspect we are using the wrong companies to develop better products because they are not the best experts in the area at all. The best experts are probably genetic engineers who may find means to stop the growth in marine organisms (although there are literally millions of types!).
I have also been somewhat perplexed to observe that some rocks and sand do not seem to have any marine growth on them at all. Some granite is often devoid of marine growth at the littoral zone. Maybe we should be looking at the environment that the marine growth comes from.

Maybe the physical nature of the product rather than the chemical may lead to success e.g. slippery, gelatinous like silicons, insoluble to the chemicals used to "latch on" by marine growth etc

From a paint company's viewpoint the current outrageously expensive paint products requiring replacement every few years must be a gold mine. Why would they want a better product on the market?

That's how to approach long term problems.

[Jim Cate]

Why would they want a better product on the market?

Well, one reason is that their current products are gradually being banned...

Jim

[takeabow40]

Originally Posted by Ilona

We are going to test a new kind of antifouling! It’s a silicone-based antifouling from Hempel. It’s not SilicOne but a two component new kind. It’s especially designed to be suitable for cruising/anchoring in warm sea water and a lot of prolonged anchoring and sailing at relatively low speeds (so perfect for a sailboat). It’s supposed to keep the boat clean up to 4 months of at anchor in these warm waters (in cool waters probably much longer)! And it’s supposed to last at least 5-7 years before you have to reapply a new layer! Does this sound fantastic or too good to be true?

We’re very exited to find out whether or not this will work like they say it does. It’s being used on professional big vessels but not really yet on yachts. The manufacturer wants to expand to yachts as well and we’re going to test it and report our findings.

I’m very happy that this is something (relatively) environmentally friendly. If it lasts 5-7 years, this saves quite a volume of regular antifouling. + they claim it stays on the boat, doesn’t erode during sailing/cleaning like regular antifoulings do. So no harmful particles in the ocean. Only when you would remove it (by hot pressure wash), the product comes off but if it’s true that you don’t loose anything during sailing/cleaning, this would mean it will be much healthier for our oceans and coral reefs.

It’s quite a big deal to apply because all the current antifouling needs to be removed up to the gel coat. At the moment we’re working on this. On our GRP sailing vessel it’s relatively easy because there was no thick layer (it all eroded into the ocean :-( ) and sanding works pretty well. Still, it’s not a fun job and it’s hot and dusty (even though we use a big vacuum cleaner on the rotor sanding tool). At the time of writing, the job is almost finished (yeeeeeah).

Some time ago I’ve posted a thread about silicone based antifouling because I was very curious to find out how people like it, what their experiences are. It seemed there is a lot of interest from others but there was not much information to find from people using it in the field. Since it’s such a big thing to apply it, it’s expensive, labour intensive and quite a big deal to have silicone on your boat, we were actually not keen on just trying it out ourselves. But when I emailed Hempel, and told them what we were going to do (long time cruising in tropical waters with long periods of time at anchor), they came up with this product which in fact seems to be much more promising than SilicOne. They were interested for us to test it so they have a sailing vessel in the most difficult circumstances to see how their product works in this situation and if we’re happy, they have free publicity in return.

So, there we go. I have nothing to report yet, since we’re still sanding but this is almost done and then we’re going to apply it. Let me know whether you guys are interested in the process and our findings.

Back to sanding and wishing we’d have a smaller boat ;-),
Ilona

Word of warning if you are spraying it on mask the rest of the boat as over spray will cause pinholing of anything you have to apply over the top .these type of products have been around for quite a few years have applied 100 of litre of various brands and would think cost would be prohibitivery for small vessel and most need hull speed of at least 10 knots to shed the fouling but good luck

[Jim Cate]

Lots of folks explaining why this wont work... hey, guys, this is a TEST, one to help see IF it will work in a yottie environment. I for one am quite interested in the outcome, and applaud both Hemple and the OP for getting on with it. One hopes for an unbiased review, and that the experiment is monitored well for interim reports.

Keep on truckin' Ilona!

Jim

[lateral]

I'm curious to whats in it.
PDMS, PTFE, PEG and derivatives/mixtures thereof, were first introduced in early nineties and have been continuously modified since.
They have got more efficient, self cleaning at lower speeds but at the cost of complex application and chemistry. Intersleek 1100sr and Silic-one seem to be the bench mark for laboratory trials and whose eficacy has been surpassed.
Neither are available to the rank and file.
Having tried to source both and experienced negative interest by both companies to supply I am back to micron 66.
I seriously considered PDMS film but at $5k for my little craft and a 10Knt release speed, decided against it.
At least International & Hempel are not making false promises on this tech.

Good onya for giving it a go. Interesting to say the least.

[fxykty]

Originally Posted by takeabow40

Word of warning if you are spraying it on mask the rest of the boat as over spray will cause pinholing of anything you have to apply over the top .these type of products have been around for quite a few years have applied 100 of litre of various brands and would think cost would be prohibitivery for small vessel and most need hull speed of at least 10 knots to shed the fouling but good luck

We thought about a similar product last year (Seacoat Sea-Speed) after having scraped all the way down to the barrier cost. But the yard we were in wouldn’t let us get a contractor in to spray unless we built a full negative pressure enclosure around the boat to prevent any chance of overspray onto neighbouring boats. That ended that dream. Also not sure about repairing any damaged areas, say from a grounding, as the stuff is very finicky to apply.

But as others have said at some point once all biocides are banned we will all be looking at products like this.

[alansmith]

Heh Bilge, well thought out composition. That was some
Interesting brain storming. Enjoyed it.

[KWISPEL]

Can you put another paint on it later or should you completely sand it down to the gelcoat?
What are the aditives in this paint ???

[fxykty]

Originally Posted by KWISPEL

Can you put another paint on it later or should you completely sand it down to the gelcoat?

What are the aditives in this paint ???

Hemple sells Silicone Remover 99450 for their Silic One and other silicone based paints. Every little bit of the silicone paint has to be removed before you can over coat with another type of anti foul.

[lateral]

Originally Posted by fxykty

Hemple sells Silicone Remover 99450 for their Silic One and other silicone based paints. Every little bit of the silicone paint has to be removed before you can over coat with another type of anti foul.

What about with more silic One? Same deal?

[fstbttms]

Siliconebased anti fouling coatings are incompatible with other non-silicone coatings.

[fxykty]

Originally Posted by lateral

What about with more silic One? Same deal?

I’ve been told that you can’t recoat a silicone based paint with the same or another silicone based paint - have to fully remove before recoating.

So even if you can double the repaint interval, you’re still introducing more cost for each interval, so overall costs might be similar.

Of bigger concern, if one scrapes some silicon based paint off, can one repair with a patch?

[BigBeakie]

FWIW, I'll relate our experience with a UK developed foul release product that we had high hopes for. You can see several of their Youtube promotional clips. It does not purport to prevent growth, it purports that all types of growth can be just wiped off. This claim is misleading, and here's why.

We worked with the Australian distributor in trials for over 6 months on several test plates that were hung in a variety of different waters on the east coast of Australia. Places that were notorious for growth.

Slime just wiped off, no matter how thick it became, leaving the surface as clean as new. I was getting excited.

Coral worm wiped off, leaving only a very slight change in the surface, I would rate it good as new. I was almost convinced.

It failed with barnacles !!

When barnacle larvae grow, they start forming their shell as a thin ring at the base. This ring then grows up in a cone, getting thicker and stronger, extremely quickly. As it grows bigger than about your little finger nail, say 0.5 to 1 cm, the bottom edge of the shell cuts through the (relatively soft) coating right to the hull surface substrate. Then it sticks like crazy, as well as carves out a ring of the foul release coating which falls away leaving an unprotected spot.

Lots of work was attempted to emedy this as I understand it, but to no avail.

The Australian distributor pulled the plug, much to his credit, rather than promote a product that ultimately would fail.

IF you sail only in non-barnacle waters ( is there such a place?) and/or IF you are hyper diligent to wipe the hull every single week, without fail, then this might work for you.

We wanted to cruise in the Kimberly, so looking over my shoulder for crocs while rubbing the hulls on a 50 foot cat, didn't seem like a prudent solution to us.

We think we're going CopperCoat, which only needs a burnish with a scrubber pad maybe twice a year, when in warm, clear and safe waters.

I genuinely am disappointed it didn't work out for the foul release, and hope somebody cracks it one day. But you must test in heavy barnacle growth areas, IMHO.