Antifouling problem - new boat

[allanbindon]

Hi, we took delivery of our new SO54DS at the factory in April 2008, had it commissioned nearby at the approved yard on the Atlantic coast of France and sailed down to the Med, finishing our season at Italy. When we lifted the boat out in September, to our horror the antifouling (and primer) in places was falling off the still waxy gellcoat.
After months of negotiation the French commissioning yard have allowed us a token refund to get it fixed elsewhere. They say they followed factory specifications with the hull prep (no sanding)

A full fix involves scraping back, acetone wash and/or abrasion and starting again. A big job!

They say this has never happened before......

Has anyone else had this unhappy experience?
What is the proper fix?

Allan Bindon
New Zealand

[MalcolmP]

Allan

I sympathise, we had a different problem on commissioning last year as went for Coppercoat - copper granules in epoxy, that was also badly applied by the yard - however they did a good subsequent job rectifying and the copper system has been brilliant for 15 months and so far no need to haul or repaint (hopefully for 10 years +)

Regarding your own problem in the UK the dealers do physically abrade the gel with wet&dry, on your own boat sounds like there might be a reasonable chance that a light scraping will dislodge the rest of the paint on the basis they could not have de-waxed the boat properly

Malcolm

[joker64]

Sorry, no valid contribution, but thought that I would add my latest problem with anti-fouling. This anti-fouling was applied by the sellers of the boat 6 months ago. Two months ago, the bottom was relatively clean, but when I put it on the hard yesterday......I found this!!!!

I think I'll do a better job that then sellers did for next year.