Yacht Forum UK

I'm going to do this myself this year. Can I just buy any old roller and tray from B and Q - or do I need to shop in a chandler for something specific?

Vic,
i don't think you need anything fancy. In my experience, antifoul sticks like the proverbial to everything. I use eroding antifoul so it has a rough finish. I think if you use hard antifoul you might want to choose the roller type carefully to get a smooth finish.
Some tips (that I don't necessarily agree with):
There's a version of masking tape that is available in Lidl occasionally. It has a sticky edge on a very wide polythene strip. Put this on the waterline and you don't have to be specially careful.
Put the roller tray inside a plastic bag then fill the tray with paint so the bag keeps the paint off the tray. At the end, take the tray out of the bag, invert the bag and put the roller in the bag too. The tray stays clean in theory but in my experience there's always a hole in the bag so the tray still gets annoyingly messy.
Use long handled radiator rollers to keep your hand a bit further from the mess. I find this takes too long as the radiator rollers are not very wide.
Wear plastic gloves. I do this, even though I find they fall apart about half way through - paint on the roller handle starts to stick to the gloves as it dries, and then they rip. Maybe I should wear 2 pairs o gloves?

I normally follow number 1, 2 and 4 but I'm usually disappointed by 2 and 4.

Dress as for paintballing.

Derek

Hehe that's funny. It sounds like everyone knows they're going to get themselves in a mess when doing this job, but they take great precautions to avoid it anyway. I guess it's damage limitation.

Thanks for the tips!

We did the job at the weekend. Two of us took about 3 hours. I followed tips 1 and 4.
This time, a new hazard was encountered - rain. It ran down the sides of the boat and gathered in the polythene folds of the masking tape. At times, we feared it would pull the tape off but we were lucky. Instead, the poly tape seemed to keep the rain off our work.
I tried two pairs of gloves. That was better than using oun pair but my tip to self for next year (I wonder if I'll remember it then) is to wear 3 gloves on the right hand; it seems my left only needs one glove. So 2 pairs of gloves are needed, but not in the most obvious way.
We ran short of paint towards the end. I had bought some cheap stuff in what I thought was sufficient quantity. As it ran out, I went to the nearby chandler who sold me 3 litres of Cruiser Uno for all but £70. The cheap stuff I bought was about half that. But when the crew saw how easily the Cruiser went on, she issued an edict - nothing of lower quality will be permitted next year. I wonder if either of us will remember that in a year's time.

Derek.

Another point I just remembered. A long-handled roller is not a bad idea for spectacles-wearers. Jane's have an interesting patina of fine spray of eroding antifouling. It isn't eroding fast enough for her!

Derek

Cheers for the latest tips! Glad you got yours sorted. I suppose the wearing of some form of goggles might be a good idea - glasses or not!

I'll let you know how I get on with mine - when I finally get around to it that is.

I suppose goggles are a wise precaution. I'm too old to take health & safety as seriously as I should (except at work, where it's unavoidable). I still remember using a hot air gun to remove antifoul, paint and varnish from the wooden rudder of my first boat in the mid 1980's. At that stage, I hadn't ever applied antifoul, so I hadn't read any warnings on the tin. I did this indoors, in a small room in my flat. The fumes were a bit rich. I had a bit of a headache for a day or two after.

Even my casual approach wouldn't let me do that again. I would use something mechanical to remove the paint layers, with a face mask. I try to avoid disturbing old layers of the poison as far as possible.

Derek