greenboatblog.com

Removing Paint and Varnish the Green Way.

Anybody who has ever applied a coat of paint or varnish knows that the key to a job well done is meticulous prep work. Before you can expect a new coating to adhere properly you have to clean the surface thoroughly, and in many cases, remove whatever material was previously applied. Of all the dreaded boat maintenance jobs, getting old paint or varnish off ranks up there with the worst.

Traditionally, paint removal has been a messy business. Sandblasters, grinders, heat guns, and heavy duty chemical strippers have been the main tools of choice for getting the job done. Workers in responsible boat yards wear full body suits and heavy duty respirators to keep from poisoning themselves when assigned this task. Workers in not so responsible yards that don’t provide such gear ingest or absorb some of the nastiest types of toxic fumes and particulates imaginable.

In addition to the human problem, the by product of these jobs invariably find their way into the water, floating on a deadly dust cloud or being washed away after it rains.

Most traditional chemical strippers go on like paint an eat away at the old coatings. They work by using such man made wonder compounds as methylene chloride and xlene. In addition to being likely cancer causing agents, these chemicals have been linked to reproductive disorders and all sorts of other major health problems.

While there are more and more laws regulating what can and can’t be legally done to make boatyards cleaner, the simple fact is that traditional methods may get the job done, but at significant cost to the people doing the job and the environment around them.

Next time you need to make your boat all bright and shiny, consider an alternative method of removing your paint and varnish.

Developed in the heartland of America, Franmar Soy Strip and Soy Gel accomplish the same thing traditional paint strippers do, but with a much lower environmental impact. Using modified soybean oils, the engineers at Franmar have spent the past 23 years perfecting a stripping agent that works great, yet allows you to capture and contain all the toxics found in the coatings that are being removed. Soy Strip and Soy Gel is applied with a regular paint brush. As it goes to works the copper, zinc, lead, and other damaging compounds found in most boat paints and varnishes binds to the stripping agent instead of floating off on the wind. A simple scraper, applied after several hours or even a day or two depending on conditions, will remove the previous coating in a safe, effective manner, allowing you to dispose of it properly.

Several recent endorsements of Soy Strip speak volumes for its real world performance. Approved for paint removal in the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard, Soy Strip has enjoyed great success from some of the most demanding shipworkers around. For more details check out this story http://www.franmar.com/portsmouth.html

Practical sailor magazine, the unbiased Consumer Reports of all things boat related, recently conducted a series of real world tests of several bottom paint strippers. The end result was a thumbs up review of Soy Strip. Check out http://www.practical-sailor.com/issues/32_11/features/5344-1.html for the full story.

So next time you need to remove some paint, varnish, urethane, or even epoxy, consider the environment and consider Soy Strip or Soy Gel.

Keeping Your Bilge Water Clean

One of the dirtiest places on almost any boat is the bilge. All sorts of nasty stuff manages to find its way down hill into your boat’s lowest interior point.

Water, fuel, oil, transmission fluid, engine coolant, and just about any other liquid you use onboard tends to get here eventually, despite the most meticulous boat owner’s efforts to keep them out.

Hose clamps rattle just a little bit loose, gaskets start to go, and adding a quart of oil while upside down under your cockpit stairs often results in a few drips or more escaping, despite your best laid plans.

Unfortunately, these toxins usually find their way over the side when traditional bilge pumps kick in, pumping both the water they are designed to remove overboard right along with the bad stuff. Until recently boat owners who wanted to prevent this from happening had few options to help them, especially on older vessels that tend to leak more than newer ones.

While it would be nice to believe that every boater is conscientiously keeping an eye on their bilge, cleaning it every chance they get and preventing every toxic drip from happening in the first place, the reality is a different matter, of course.

Most boaters do use bilge socks and other absorbent devices to try and grab some of these toxins, and most of them work just fine, for a while.

Eventually, though, even the highest quality pad becomes saturated and loses its effectiveness. Routine monitoring of when you put a fresh sock down below, and keeping track of how long it is supposed to work, is a practice every responsible boat owner should apply.

But of course, we all get busy, and anyone who hasn’t vacuumed the coils on their refrigerator exactly on schedule is probably guilty of letting a bilge sock set a while longer than it should.

Recently, however, a revolutionary, though quite simple idea, has made pumping your bilge a much cleaner option.

Almost all bilge pumps operate the same, activating on a schedule or being triggered by a float switch when the bilge water level reaches a certain level. 

Once they turn on, your pump simply pushes whatever is in your bilge through a drain hose to a vent or thru-hull valve over the side.

Instead of using this traditional design, it is now easy to install a simple filter system between your pump and the outside water. Much like a fuel or oil filter is designed to remove impurities; bilge pump filters do the same, separating hydrocarbons from bilge water then sending just the water out through the drain.

These systems are simple to install in any out of the way area that works, require few if any moving parts, and only require occasional maintenance when the filter element gets full.

In addition to being the right thing to do, these pumps pay for themselves many times over when you consider the consequences of getting caught pumping oily bilge water.

Fines for dumping contaminants of any kind often run in the thousands of dollars these days in crowded harbors. Enforcement is on the rise, as it should be, to prevent this unnecessary damage from being done to waterways across the land.

So do the Earth a favor and consider installing a simple device to clean up your bilge water.

Green Anti-Fouling Paint

The minute your boat hits the water all sorts of aquatic critters try to hitch a ride. Depending on your water conditions – fresh or salt, warm or cold, you will experience varying degrees of growth on your hull.  If not treated properly, before too long, a little green line will form at the waterline, followed by an increasing amount of slimy stuff accumulating below the waterline. In the most extreme cases the big boys – barnacles, muscles, and their friends will grab on too.

For centuries mariners dealt with this same problem, of course, but somewhere along the way, somebody came up with a solution that sounded pretty good at the time. Unfortunately for the environment, the same basic principles behind this original fix have led to a pollution problem that may never go away. After getting fed up with watching their boats devoured below the waterline, some ancient shipwright decided to apply a thin sheet of copper to his vessels hull. As pretty as it is, copper is deadly toxic to anything that tries to grow on it.

In modern times, the chemical gurus decided that what worked for the Romans would work today. Instead of sheathing entire boats in copper, however, somebody decided to mix copper into a paint that could be applied to a boat’s hull. Other nasty stuff – mostly heavy metals – were also added, making modern day anti-fouling paint.

To prolong the effectiveness of this wonder product, most formulas are designed to be “ablative”, and here is where the damage to the marine environment starts.  Ablative paints are soft.  Over time, the paint layers gradually fall off, exposing a new and more toxic layer of paint to keep the critters away.  The problem, of course, is that as the old layer of paint sinks, it carries along with it trace amounts of all the toxins it contains.

A 30 foot sailboat requires about four gallons of anti-fouling paint to adequately cover the exposed hull surface. The average effective life of this paint job is about 18-24 months. If you are using copper paint you are basically dumping four gallons of paint over the side every few years.  Add up all the boaters doing the same thing and you can start to see what we are doing to the waters we enjoy. As tempting as it may be to blame big industry for most of our water pollution problems, boaters should take a long look into the mirror as well.

There are statistics that will make your head spin about heavy metal concentrations, parts per million, etc… but the one that really hits home has to do with the resident Killer Whale populations of Puget Sound. Based on laboratory analysis of random blood samples from these majestic creatures, the toxic load in their bodies will probably make the entire group sterile, and subsequently extinct, within the next 25 years.  Now obviously, this travesty did not occur just because of boat paint. But if mankind’s efforts to go a little faster, or make their boats look neat and shiny contributed even a little bit, we should be ashamed of ourselves if we use another gallon of toxic anti-fouling paint.

Alternatives exist that are effective, safe, and comparable in cost.

One of the pioneers in the area of copper-free boat paints is a company called EPaint. In a nutshell, Epaint solves the problem of deterring marine growth on your boat with a common substance – hydrogen peroxide. When properly applied, EPaint reacts with water and oxygen to create a microscopic layer of hydrogen peroxide on the bottom of your boat. Hydrogen peroxide is toxic to life forms that might try to take hold, however, when it falls off into the water it breaks down harmlessly. You see, the chemical formula for hydrogen peroxide is H2O2. After it sloughs off your hull, H2O2 converts into good old H2O – or water –in no time. So, instead of leaving a trail of copper in your wake you get to keep your speed, keep your shine, and stop causing harm.

For more details on EPaint you can check out the company’s main web site at

Before you buy please consider going  through  greenboatstuff.com at

Another option that is gaining ground are the “slick” paints being developed. The concept here is a paint that is so slippery it is extremely difficult for any organism to grab on in the first place. Much like a Teflon pan that keep food from sticking, these “Teflon” paints are better alternatives, in our opinion, than the copper paints. The issue we have with the slick paints, however, is that the chemical compounds that make them work can still accumulate in the water, and subsequently the tissue of the plants and animals that live there. The manufacturers will argue that the slick paints are much harder than the ablatives, and therefore less likely to come off your hull in the short term. While this may be

true, all paints peel eventually. Compared to copper, however, the slick paints are a much better choice.

The greenest option, of course, is to apply no paint at all. A long, sturdy scrub brush works pretty well at dislodging most algae. Sure it’s a chore, but so is painting. At about $200 per gallon for anti-fouling paint (reapplied every few years), you can also pencil the cost of hiring a local diver to do the scrubbing for you, or just doing it yourself. If you were looking for an excuse to justify the cost of getting dive certified, here you go.

Whatever you decide when it comes to anti-fouling paint, please try to look at the big picture. As big as we might think the world is, it is still a closed system, affected either now or later by the actions we take.