… barnacles! I just received some whatsapp pictures from the nice person at our winter storage place. They had lifted our dear Hanse yacht out of the water, and then looked at its bottom in disbelief. “No so great,” he texted me.
Barnacle Gallery
What Had Happened?
I sent over an email to our Hanse dealer, with pictures and all, asking what they think had happened.
They answered immediately. And I started texting the same information to the winter storage person.
“So, they told me what had happened,” I started.
“Yes?” he wrote back.
“Down in Greifswald, they put the wrong anti-fouling on it. They put some super ecological paint, designed only for freshwater lakes,” I continued.
He replied quickly, with just a single emoji.
“🤦♂️”
What Next?
Hanse (or rather our dealer) apologised for having messed up the bottom paint. They offered to pay for part of the fixing costs, but at the moment I’m not sure how much that is going to be.
The yard will have to grind away what’s left of the barnacles, and after that put new anti-fouling on the boat. So far it seems the primer is ok, so hopefully it won’t be a huge job.
I will post more news and pictures as the barnacle story develops!
Poor you! I wonder if the relatively clear bit at the top of the rudder is due to different antifoul there. Because of galvanic corrosion risk to the metal rudder shaft you’re not supposed to use regular antifoul in this area (containing copper), but to use special non metallic stuff (same as saildrive). See https://www.jefa.com › rudderPDF
Yes, seems so! Whatever they put there, it worked better 🙂 One other note about corrosion: I was a bit afraid there would have been a lot of it, but the zinc anode at least seemed in to be in reasonable shape. So far so good.
A quick remark… You do realize that the anode should *not* be in good shape? After all, the whole purpose is that it should sacrifice itself… Or maybe I just missed your point))
A great quick remark!
What I actually meant (I think) was in “good shape” compared to my fear that it would have been completely dissolved. I read a lot about poorly installed electrical systems and corroded aluminium rudder shafts, and that was (and still is) my main fear.
Especially since we kept the boat on shore power 24/7 when in our own harbour.
Your question got me thinking though, that were the zincs actually in too good condition. I went back to check some pictures and (fortunately) there was a good amount of visible corrosion on them.
Our home harbour is in a tricky place, though, right next to the outlet of a freshwater stream, so I don’t know whether zinc is the best protective material there…
Anyway, we’ll have to check the rudder shaft next spring, anyway, just to make sure it’s all good. The propeller seemed fine 🙂
Mikael