Coppercoat, Should I remove it?

[GordyP]

Soda blasting will work well, I have had this done on the yacht to remove old antifoul and also deck paint. It leaves a slightly hazy keyed finish so if you want to get back to a shiny hull you would need to do a bit of fine wet and dry sanding and polishing afterwards.

[willk]

Dry Ice/CO2 blasting is becoming widely used to remove antifoul from bigger boats. Some operators have a mobile service. It's going to look pricey but there are no expensive chemicals or days of labour. If your hull was keyed with a sander before the antifoul was applied, then it will need work done afterwards, but that's the case no matter what you do. Dry Ice is not as abrasive as soda and is recommeded for use on plastics.

Gotchi, you need to exercise that google finger a bit more

[SPR]

it was soda that a Yottie was talking about - I might try with some cheap cola in jetwash! lol

[ewan clark]

As others have mentioned, it looks more like a conventional blue anti-foul paint than it does Coppercoat. Our Coppercoat product does go blue at the waterline, but lower down it stays a dark green colour.

This being the case I'd suggest removing it, as it's anti-foul properties are spent (and you don't need them anyway given the your pattern of use). You should also see a slight performance gain by removing this layer of rough, absorbant paint.

This can be achieved by hand using a scrapper and a sander, but blasting (soda or dry-ice) is quicker. As long as you use an experienced marine blaster (for example, www.symblast.com or www.arccompany.co.uk) they'll be no damage to the gelcoat. We have several hundred GRP boats blast cleaned in the UK each year without damage, but employing a skilled operator is key.

[tonto]

The antifoul is not coppercoat, so I now need to know what to do.
I have jet washed the blue crap, and it will come off, so i will do that. The hull is keyed, so I need to decide what else to do.
I can either polish the gelcoat, but am leaning to recoating with coppercoat. I have access to a spray gun, but was wondering if the coppercoat will go through a spraygun, or what type of thinners i need. (the spraygun is an air spray gun, not an airless spraygun)

[ewan clark]

It is possible to spray apply Coppercoat, using a conventional air-fed remote pressure-pot system from the likes of DeVilbiss. But you need plenty of pressure (120 psi at the gun tip) and a big compressor (to provide 13 cubic feet per minute). Certainly it can't be applied with a gravity fed gun or a small domestic set-up - it's too thick and heavy a paint system for that.

The easier option would be just to roller apply it, and this is what at least 90% of our UK customers do. Naturally all the big boats and super yachts have the Coppercoat spray applied, by for anything under about 50ft its generally easier to use a roller.

We stock the correct type of rollers and thinners so can provide you with a whole package.