Econea Based Bottom Paint Test

[osirissail]

Interesting - Pettit and Interlux add Zinc to their Econea mixture while Sea Hawk does not. Also the concentration Econea is highest in the Pettit - about twice what Sea Hawk has.

I have participated in Zinc anti-foulant tests and although the stuff works great it requires the presence of sunlight to keep the anti-foulant reaction going. So I don't know how effective the paints would be for shaded or bottom areas of the keel.

[fstbttms]

Originally Posted by osirissail

I have participated in Zinc anti-foulant tests and although the stuff works great it requires the presence of sunlight to keep the anti-foulant reaction going. So I don't know how effective the paints would be for shaded or bottom areas of the keel.

Oh, I do. I'll post pictures when I get back to the office.

[fstbttms]

Originally Posted by fstbttms

Oh, I do. I'll post pictures when I get back to the office.

The anti fouling paint on the Alerion 28 in these pix was Pettit Vivid Eco. These pix represent about 2 month's growth. As expected, the deeper we went, the dirtier the hull. This product ultimately proved unsatisfactory to the client, as have all Econea products I've seen here in the Bay Area. He switched paints in less than a year.

Bow near waterline


Top of keel


Bottom of keel

[HopCar]

Looks like Vivid Eco isn't in their 2012 catalog. I guess they didn't like it either. I've heard some good things about Interlux Pacifica but for now I'll stick with a copper / slime juice paint for now.

[fstbttms]

Originally Posted by HopCar

I've heard some good things about Interlux Pacifica but for now I'll stick with a copper / slime juice paint for now.

An experimental version of Pacifica Plus. 2 months old. The owner of this S&S 55 has already made plans to switch to something else:

Bow


Random clean spots

[HopCar]

Looks like the main issue with both of those paints is soft growth. The Pacifica uses Interlux Biolux anti-slime which is usually pretty effective. I wonder if the anti-slime biocides don't play well with Econea?

[fstbttms]

Originally Posted by HopCar

Looks like the main issue with both of those paints is soft growth. The Pacifica uses Interlux Biolux anti-slime which is usually pretty effective. I wonder if the anti-slime biocides don't play well with Econea?

In the Bay Area, hard growth is not much of an issue on the time scale we're talking about here. We wouldn't expect to see much of it regardless of what was on the hull.

[osirissail]

Looking up the Pettit Vivid Eco's MSDS, it appears it is a purely Zinc based formulation with some cyanide slime killer in it.

The photo pretty much confirm what I found with a different manufacturer's early version of "zinc" bottom paint. Up to about 6 months in Florida waters the zinc paint worked wonderful (so did Trinidad - my comparison product) but almost like it had a timer in it, the paint totally failed to function thereafter. And the deeper the test panel the worse the performance which is what led me to the need to deduce the need for adequate sunlight to keep the zinc anti-fouling reaction going (which was also specified in the tech info - it needs sunlight to work). So I recommended to the manufacturer that they only market it to power boats that reside on "lifts" that take the boat out of the water when not in use.

But the development of "copper-free/metal-free" anti-foulants is still very young which might be why Pettit's second version has twice the Econea/Tralopyril in it than the other manufacturers. Plus some zinc. Just conjecture, but they are probably trying to get a whole season or more from the stuff. Laboratory tests are a fine place to start but you need to get the paint out into the real world to find out whether it really works.

It has been my experience that "how" the paint was applied to the boat's bottom can significantly influence the performance of the paint, especially with copper paints.

[Cheechako]

Originally Posted by callmecrazy

Critters do stick to sharks, but the ramoras keep them clean... most of the marine animals that move slow enough to grow barnacles, do. And most of them have some type of symbiosis with another animal to keep them clean.

Maybe they should start training ramoras?

I've never seen barnacles on Sharks the way I have on whales... doesnt mean it doesnt happen though! Evidently the Navy and the University of Washington thinks they dont.......
I think I DID have ramoras in the Sea of Cortez.... seems like you could always see something moving around the bottom of the boat at night from the phophorescence....

[tony.keel]

My Pettit Eco Ultima has not even made it out of the yard. The first coat went on fine and cured. Put on a second coat of a different colour, and it has remained like sticky putty all over the bottom. The Pettit rep says that it may have been applied to thickly or that gasses may be escaping from the underlying new epoxy bottom job. So we had this professionally applied by a reputable and experienced boat builder with a 3/16" nap roller (as stamped on the can lid of some cans but not included in the instructions on the can or the website) onto a test substrate of well cured and prepared fiberglass. As on the hull of the boat, the underlying coat cured, but the top coat DID NOT CURE.

There appears to be a serious quality control issue here that has spoiled the bottom job. I am not sure yet what Pettit is willing to do to resolve this. I will keep you posted. In the meantime - be forewarned.

[Tortuga's Lie]

All,
I used the Petit Ultima Eco this year on the Chesapeake, Lower Potomac primarily. I thought I would relay my experience with the product so far. I want to state right off that I knew that this is a new product and it did not have any history behind it and that the Practical Sailor tests on it were only a couple of months of testing and not a long-term testing. I wanted to try it, I knew I was a guinnea pig.
I stripped off my existing bottom paint down to the barrier coat, applied an additional barrier coat (I have had small blisters and wanted to keep them in check), let dry. I then applied a hard copper bottom paint as a tie-coat. let dry. Applied two coats of Eco as directed by the manufacturer with a 1/4" nap. After a full week of dry time, it was still soft to a fingernail. This was in mid April when the temps were in the upper 60's to mid 70's and no rain. I had a time constraint with the boatyard and needed to get wet. We went ahead and launched eventhough the paint was still a little soft. The slings damaged the paint slightly but left enough intact so I wasn't really concerned with that.
Sometime in mid-late June, the soft growth was noticable, so I dove on it and scrubbed. No hard growth though.
Scrubbed again in late July, soft growth only.
Today, in early November, it has a nice layer of soft growth but no barnacles yet.

In conclusion, I think there is some "tweaking" to do on the product before I would use it again. I have been a Petit fan for a very long time using Trinidad and regular Ultima so I am a bit dissapointed with the Ultima Eco but again, I knew I was experimenting with it.
I spoke to the Petit people at the Annapolis boat show and they said they would send someone down when I pulled the boat so they could determine the poor results. They also indicated that it may not have had enough time to dry between coats and therefore never set up. My thought is that if this paint is this hard and temperamental to work with....I stick with the old stuff!!!

[osirissail]

Tortuga's Lie - I had the same experience with Pettit Ultima Econea - it never seemed to harden. I put it on the bottom of my aluminum dinghy just to try it out. Using the paint straight from the can resulted in the soft, never quite dry situation. I did my boat's spade rudder with Petttt Econea but thinned it down quite a bit and it did dry reasonably "hard." So I put on more layers than I put on the dinghy.

As a side note, wholesalers in Central Florida are dropping Pettit paints from their inventories. So you might ask the Pettit rep's what's up? Why are your Pettit paint products being removed from professional wholesale distribution system?

[Tortuga's Lie]

osirissail,

Thanks for the feedback. It sounds like there are many of us that have had issues with this paint, but maybe Petit isn't aware of all of us yet? When I spoke to this guy at the show (I don't remember his name but he was high up the food chain) he indicated that they have had good results and I was a "1 in 10,000" having poor results. He was rather off putting making me feel that I may have done somehting wrong although I felt that I followed the printed directions (PDF from their website) to a "T". To his credit, he does want to find out why.
If my results are such a rare occurance, why am I hearing similar experiences (not just from this site) and virtually no possitive results???
Has anyone out there had a possitive experience with Petit Ultima Eco????

[osirissail]

Originally Posted by Tortuga's Lie

. . . Has anyone out there had a possitive experience with Petit Ultima Eco????

Problem with that question is that it takes a year or two of having the stuff on your boat which is in the water - to find out how well it keeps bottom growth off the hull. Since the stuff is still new I don't think many folks have had it on their boats for that length of time. So there wouldn't be much in the way of real life feedback on the stuff.

[fstbttms]

Originally Posted by osirissail

Problem with that question is that it takes a year or two of having the stuff on your boat which is in the water - to find out how well it keeps bottom growth off the hull.

Not at all true. Take my customer with the Alerion 28 (of which I posted previously, including pix) for instance. He became unhappy with Ultima Eco long before a year was up because it was clear the product wasn't performing well. I provided him with photograhic evidence of that within the first two months after the boat was splashed.