Whilst labouring with a tin of conventional anti fouling on a windy day I began to wonder if there is any truth behind the hype surrounding the various copper epoxy products on the market. There must surely be some OCCers out there that have taken the plunge and invested in this supposedly long life and labour saving product? If you have tried it I 'd be really interested to hear how well it worked for you?

I put Coppercoat on Spring Dawn in 2009 after I bought her. Although the hull is now approaching 30 years old, she 'd been out of the water about 12 months when the job was done. The hull, except the rudder, was within the recommended limits for moisture given by Coppercoat 's supplier. I had the hull profesionally slurry blasted to clean off all previous and provide a good key. We then put 3 coats of epoxy and about 5 coats of the copper epoxy on.

Effectiveness seems good so far, whilst still on the Hamble we needed to scrub 2 or 3 times a year but the availability of scrubbing piles at both the Southern and RAFYC take the hassle out of that. Since then, in going round the coast to Gibraltar, the hull has stayed free of all but a light weedy growth in the sunny areas. That comes off easily swimming round with a pan scrubber, which I dont hestitate to use as the underlying surface is hard.

As a cost case I 'll at least break even over ten years, especially as the price of antifoul goes up as you leave UK waters. What I wont have is the labour of preparation and application of new layers each year. Trying to minimise lift outs and time ashore was also part of the equation, taking that into account it should be better than break-even but, hey, whose counting. The key to doing the job is to get the application right; temperature, thickness, timing and weather all matter.

If you search on Google for 'YBW coppercoat ' you 'll find a number of threads with a wide range of peoples experiences - mostly good, though there are the usual notorious dissenters.