The Unified Corribee Website

Effective anti-fouling techniques vary from region to region due to different water temperatures and thus marine life present. We hope to build up a list of effective anti-fouling products here along with the region(s) where they have proven to be effective. Please let us know what works for you and where you are using the contact details at the bottom of this page.

The underwater area of a bilge keel Corribee is reported to be approximately fifteen square meters.

COPPERCOAT

The author is refitting a Mk2 bilge keel Corribee and is looking for an anti-fouling solution. COPPERCOAT was mentioned and a description of information obtained whilst researching it follows. One thing that appealed was that the hull needs to be epoxied and it was hoped that as COPPERCOAT is epoxy based, it would be a two in one solution. Unfortunately, this does not appear to be the case. Please note that it has not actually been tried yet, so buyer beware.

COPPERCOAT (www.coppercoat.com) is a copper and water soluble epoxy solution which is claimed to last ten years and to have some boats that have been protected for fifteen years. It is supplied preapplied on some new build boats. COPPERCOAT is supplied in one litre tins which are sufficent to treat four square meters of hull to a final finish (i.e. for all recommended coats). As of May 2009, after a 10% discount, COPPERCOAT costs GBP 59 ex. VAT per one litre unit meaning that it would cost GBP 236 ex. VAT plus postage and VAT to treat a Corribee.

Asking a surveyor in the Bristol Channel area whether it was worthwhile, he was initially non-commital but became more positive when it was mentioned that the boat to be treated was kept on a drying mooring. According to him, it needs to be exposed to air regulalry to be effective. Practical Boat Owner seem to be enthusiastic and do not mention needing exposure to air – see the review here:

http://www.ybw.com/ybw/reprints/pbo/coppercoat.html

Cruiser UNO

Declan McKinney writes: I use Cruiser UNO from International. This is my first full season with my own boat, so I’m not sure how effective it will be. The boats I have raced on also use Cruiser UNO, and it seems to work fine for the Atlantic Coast of Ireland. We usually give them a slight scrub in August or September, and they do need this. Of course, they do more miles and go quicker than my little Corribee so I may fare worse.

International say that a boat up to twenty five feet long can be antifouled with 2.5 litres of their product. As of August 2009, boatpaint.co.uk were selling a three litre can for GBP 57.73 inc. VAT plus postage.

Flag

sCorribee writes: I use the cheapest possible – usually bought from Beaulieu Boat Jumble for about GBP 25 for 2.5 litres! The last lot I bought was Flag, prior to that I have used International and Blakes. It needs to be the eroding type (often called ‘cruising’ antifoul) rather than the hard type which is used for power boats. No antifoul seems to be 100% effective, and the effectiveness depends on things like water temperature, nutrient content, fertiliser run-off from the surrounding land (especially in estuary moorings) and salinity. All these vary from year to year and are impossible to quantify or forecast. For instance, the Flag I used last year didn’t seem to work very well, but seems to be much better this year – why, I don’t know. All I can say with any certainty is that any antifouling is better than none at all, and most boats benefit from a mid-season scrub.

I always use a four inch roller to apply antifouling, with a long handled radiator roller. Prior to painting, the hull will have been pressure washed and rubbed down with a coarse (40 grit) abrasive using a pole sander. Barnacles can be scraped off easily with a palette knife. The dust from ant-fouling paint is a bit nasty so the pole sander keeps you away from it to some extent. Mask, overalls and rubber gloves job.

The alternatives are dry sailing (i.e. keeping the boat out of the water and trailer-sailing) or using something like COPPERCOAT. This is expensive, requires the hull to be stripped off completely, and applied in controlled conditions, usually with an epoxy undercoat (around 5 coats I think) and the copper-enriched top coat (2 or 3 coats from memory). It lasts about 10 years and costs about GBP 1000 for a Corribee sized boat. It still needs scrubbing off every now and then, to expose the copper content in the surface coat.

Contribute

Do you have a story, information, brochure, manual, link or other relevant content that should be on this page? If so, we would be very grateful if you would leave it as a comment or email corribeeeditors@googlemail.com so we can post here – thanks!