Antifouling Your Boat

Applying Anti-fouling paint to your boat is never much fun, especially in winter. But it's vitally important if you want to protect your boat from the harmful effects of fouling on the hull. So each winter as a part of your boat maintenance programme, you necessarily put on your overalls, visit the chandlers shop, purchase your choice of scrapers, paint strippers, protective masks, gloves and a good supply of sandpaper and begin the relentless, year in and year out task of preparing your boat for it's new coating of antifouling paint....knowing that all too soon the algae and barnacle growth will start to appear.

An alternative to antifouling paint

There is an alternative to conventional antifouling paint now, which has been introduced to the marine market by Ultrasonic Antifouling Ltd, which means that you no longer have to spend half the refit time scraping the old antifouling paints off your hull, just to replace it with another antifouling coating. Now you can just fit an electronic antifouling system which will do all the work for you, which will allow you much more time for attending to the rest of the boat maintenance.

The Ultra 10 system (for boats up to 10 metres) and the Ultra 20 system (for boats up to 20 metres) will deter the mass of rudimentary animal and plant life forms, all competing for somewhere to live and grow, from attaching themselves to your boat bottom. These organisms include the larvae of literally billions of barnacles, mussels and other sea creatures, together with seaweed spores from around the world...one of the biggest problems for every boat owner.

Effective Antifouling Systems are absolutely essential if you want to avoid these infestations. Plankton is most concentrated around our coasts, and in harbours and estuaries, where agricultural run off and water from sewage treatment works provides a rich source of food on which these organisms can thrive. Indeed, plankton is often dense enough to be visible during the day and can sometimes be seen glowing on really dark nights. Everything in the sea is bathed in this 'soup' of living matter, and your boat can become badly fouled within just a few weeks unless protected by an effective anti-fouling system.

Apart from looking unsightly, heavy fouling makes your boat slow, less responsive, less fuel efficient and more difficult to manoeuvre in close quarters situations. Boats spend a large proportion of their working life partly submerged in water. As with all objects subjected to long periods of time in the water, boat hulls become prone to colonisation by the many micro-organisms which inhabit the aquatic environment. This colonisation is known as fouling. The extent of infestation depends on a number of factors including water temperature, salinity and productivity of the organic matter on which the organisms feed. Antifouling paints are  applied to prevent the build up of these organisms, but it has to be much better to install Ultrasonic Antifouling and prevent the organisms from attaching to the hull in the first place.

Antifouling paints usually contain a biocide, or toxin, held within the structure of the paint. The coating is designed to leach biocide slowly into the marine environment, preventing any organism adhering to the paint by poisoning the settling organisms. Of course at the same time as poisoning these organisms, it probably has quite a pollutant effect on the environment to which it is being released because the nature of a biocide is such that potentially it can have harmful effects, not only on the fouling organism it is designed to deter, but also on other marine life unconnected with fouling activity.

The Ultra antifouling system is completely pollutant free and offers a much more environmentally friendly way to keep your hull clear from fouling.