We all hate it, but it needs to be done, so it ought to be done right. All too often boats are painted with too little thought and preparation – even by professionals – and the result is a paint job that performs poorly and needs to be redone or removed in short order. Biocide-based […]

Sometimes it’s hard to tell if you need new bottom paint or not. Maybe the boat is new to you and nobody knows when it was last painted. Maybe you think it should be painted but it looks pretty clean. If your bottom is dirty, it may just be that the boat hasn’t moved in […]

Virtually all fiberglass boats are protected on the outside with a pigmented polyester resin called gelcoat. While it’s very robust, gelcoat is, compared to paint, quite porous and soft, so it needs to be regularly maintained — cleaned, polished, and waxed — if it’s to continue looking good and protecting the boat’s laminate structure from […]

In the past few years a new technology has become available to prevent the growth of marine organisms on the bottom of boats that will hopefully replace toxic bottom paints forever. Ultrasonic antifouling creates sophisticated digital signals that are transmitted through the hull and are extremely hostile to algae. If the algae don’t grow, mussels […]