Ready to haul out

This morning, we moved from St George's/Port Louis over to Woburn Bay, near the marina where we will haul out on Thursday.

The main reason for hauling out is because the bottom paint that came on the boat has worn thin, and on the bow has worn out entirely.

It's an ablative antifouling paint (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-fouling_paint), so it's meant to wear off like this.

We have been told that 12-18 months is about what you should expect to get out of it, and that's pretty much inline with how long ours lasted.

We are having a different kind of bottom paint applied. It's a non-ablative hard epoxy system with copper flakes embedded, called Copper Coat. The copper is supposed to inhibit growth, and the smooth epoxy surface is supposed to make it harder for things to latch on, and make it easier to clean.

It's a lot more expensive, but it should last 10-15 years, so in the long run it should be cheaper. If it's easier to clean and reduces the number of times we need to haul out, it'll be well worth it!

I'll try to document the process, from haul out to splash, it should take 2 weeks for the team to finish removing the old paint and apply 6 coats of the new stuff.

I have a bunch of boat projects to do while this is going on, so I don't anticipate being bored. 😃