Barrier coat

[jpaulroberts]

I just took several years of bottom paint off my boat (bought last September), sanded and faired the hull (it had previously had barrier coat put on it... I don't know when) and put a new barrier coat on using Interlux 2000E. Glad to advice anyone thinking of it. Lots of work, but worth it. I plan to keep this boat for a long time.

[Ron Hill]

Jerry : Now that you've got all of that old paint off and a barrier coat back on here's what I've advised people to do:
Put on a coat of hard bottom paint - color of your choice.  Then put on a coat or two of ablative in a contrasting color.  When you see the color of the hard bottom paint - it's time to paint again!!  

[Ed Shankle]

I did that a few years back, but didn't do a first coat of hard bottom paint, as Ron recommends, just went to 2 coats of ablative.
Ron, what's the rationale for the 1st coat of hard paint? When I did mine, I didn't do the keel, just the hull, since the previous owner had switched over to a fin from a wing the prior year, and so it already had a new barrier coat and new coat of hard bottom paint. So I simply added ablative over that. What has happened over the few years since is that I have to scrap different patches of the keel each year, but virtually have to do nothing to the hull except repaint. It seems to me that over time, the hard bottom paint flakes off, requiring scrapping and sanding. Ron, do you experieince that with your method?

Ed

[Ron Hill]

The reason for the hard bottom coat being first over the barrier coat/s before the ablative paint, is because when the ablative paint erodes(as it should), there's still a bottom paint rather than just the barrier coat/s - for protection from the nasties.

Ideally the hard bottom paint is applied before the barrier coat is fully cured.  Then it will chemically as well as mechanically bond to the barrier coat.