12 Februar y 2015
letters
http://www.mysailing.com.auboats for pleasure, excitement and
relaxation! Annual, or if we are lucky
- biennial, antifouling of our boats is
traditionally seen as an unavoidable time
and financial expense in pursuing this
boating activity we all seem to enjoy. So
thank you Jonathan, we are all the more
informed for your efforts and I for one
look forward to your next update.
My letter is in response to the comment
in the article that “copper powder and
epoxy coatings ..... are not economically
viable in Australia on older yachts”.
I respect that opinion, but following is my
story and a different perspective.
Some years ago, I tired of this regular
antifouling ritual and resolved to find
a better way. Our little 22’, thirty year
old trailerable yacht had been out of
the water for a few months for winter
maintenance and the antifoul was
cracking and flaking off. Hitting it with
a pressure washer removed a lot more
of the old material and I was intent of
scraping the remainder off when
I discovered the local marina had a soda-
blast machine. This was the go!
The result was a perfectly clean hull,
but I didn’t want to go through all this
process again in the future.
A friend of mine mentioned
Coppercoat. “I haven’t touched the
hull for years” was enough for me to
look further.
I researched numerous reviews online,
tracked the Australia distributor down,
ordered the four litres required (it was
known previously as Coppershield) and
on it went. The full four coats finished in
one day by early afternoon.
How glad are we? The savings in
time, inconvenience and expense, are
indeed there.
Fast forward to late 2011, we had
been dreaming for years of “cruising
the Med” and decided rather than let
the dream die, we would give it our best
shot. Our new yacht was ordered and
then the fun started.We stuck to our desire to have a
minimal maintenance/minimal hassle/
minimal expense boat. So we had
Coppercoat applied to our new yacht and
when we are at a marina and see boats in
a yard having their bottoms ‘scraped and
slapped’ we are so glad we did.
That is our personal experience of
previous antifouling and the change to
Coppercoat on an old boat, plus use of
Coppercoat from new on our other yacht.
That is where it would stop except
for one thing. Last year, prior to
returning to our boat, I needed a litre of
Coppercoat to touch up some damage
on the keel (a mooring chain in Antibes
in the dead of night ....).
Not being able to find the Australian
distributor anymore I contacted the
UK head office, only to be told thedistributor had moved on and they were
looking for a new agent over here. Being
involved in importing for over 25 years,
I put our collective hands up and we
added Coppercoat to our portfolio.
Twelve months and three shipments
later, we now have a fairly good idea of
how others are finding/using Coppercoat.
We have some wonderful personal
accounts on file, but one thing is clear: in
excess of 90 per cent of sales are going to
owners of older boats who are removing
their traditional antifouling and applying
Coppercoat. They have looked at their
annual costs, looked at the cost/effort
of removing their old antifoul, the cost
of Coppercoat, then like us with our 22
footer, they have gone for Coppercoat.
We started out advising that
the typical break-even point with
using Coppercoat over a traditional
antifouling was at the three-year mark.
However recently, a number of people
have come back to us disputing that
claim, advising that in their experience
they are already saving money after
only a year.
It just goes to demonstrate that each
of us have a difference experience, a
different perspective and a different
favourite product. We and our
customers say Coppercoat is great for
boats old and new. Jonathan differs
in his view regarding older boats, but
does state “if we ordered a new yacht,
we would not think twice but apply
Coppercoat by AMC ..”. I can’t argue
with that!
David Burnett
ABS Technologies Marine“...one thing is clear: in
excess of 90% of sales are
going to owners of older
boats who are removing
their traditional antifouling
and applying Coppercoat.”