Copper Antifouling on a Painted Aluminum Hull?

[sandy daugherty]

A quick google of 'alternative hull paints' and 'non-copper antifouling' led me to conclude that A: nothing worth while is on the horizon, and B: citizens of Southern California in general and the Port of San Diego in particular would rather turn their harbors and commerce centers into nature trails.

[Dedzaboy]

Seems to me that there's a lot of theory about this whole thing, and maybe, just maybe, it's safe to paint an aluminium hull with Coppercoat. But would I take the risk? Absolutely completely and definitely not! And we shouldn't be confused with tales of having applied Coppercoat to 40 steel and aluminium boats without problems either - as has been stated already it's fine with steel, possibly not with aluminium, so "40 steel and aluminium boats" is meaningless. 39 steel and 1 aluminium? 35 steel and 5 aluminium? Who knows?

[Steve Pope]

I to am looking for a modern antifoulant that can give protection to an alluminium hull, unfortunately nothing comes close to the earlier TBT based antifouls. I have used both Trilux and Trilux33, they seem to be the best of a bad bunch with the cheaper Trilux working better on my hull than the very expensive Trilux33. Most if not all Navys still use TBT based paints. There should never have been a blanket approach to the banning of TBT as a cruising yacht/boat that is "cruising" would not have the capacity to have any effect on marine life as against the large marina based fleets (where the tests were done) that generally never moves and therefore had an effect especially in non or slow flushing marinas. The accord re the banning of TBT isn't universal there are quite a few countries that havn't ratified the protocol. So if you ever get to a country that hasn't ratified, stock up for the next few years.