T&T: Petite Ultima SSA bottom Paint

[Faure, Marin]

>The local yard is recommending Petite Ultima SSA paint. I understand it
is a single season paint and that it will wear away almost completely
over the year.

We have used Petit Ultima SR on our boat since buying it ten-plus years
ago.  It went on over the PO's hard bottom paint.  We get two years out
of it in the waters up here, but that shouldn't be a guide to what will
happen in other waters.  Every year we have one full coat applied to the
boat and then a second coat put along the waterline, on both sides of
the forefoot, and on the rudders.  These are the higher-wear areas.  I
am not familiar with the Ultima SSA paint so I don't know how it differs
from the Ultima SR (SR is "slime resistant").  One thing about ablative
paints---- if you don't use the boat regularly the paint loses its
effectiveness because it depends on the outer molecules or whatever
being worn off by the boat's movement through the water to expose the
fresher material underneath.  So I believe a boat that sits for long
periods of time might be better off with a non-sloughing paint.

For example, we did not use our boat this winter nearly as much as we
usually do because the days my schedule allowed us to go out were almost
always very windy, plus I was on assignment for two months in China.  We
had the boat hauled the other week for an insurance survey--- they just
hung it in the slings while the surveyor went over the hull--- and even
though we had the bottom painted a year ago there were far more baby
barnacles on the rudders, shafts, V-struts, and props than we normally
get after two full years in the water.  We go up to the boat virtually
every weekend year round, but this winter we only actually took it out
once or twice and that was just on short day trips around the bay.
Winds permitting (we don't care about the non-stop rain, snow, fog, and
volcanic ash), we will be using the boat a lot more from here on so I
expect we'll go back to getting a full two years out of a paint job with
minimal growth on the underwater hardware.

______________________________
C. Marin Faure
GB36-403 "La Perouse"
Bellingham, Washington