The keen racers here like to scrub off the slime and mud from the bottom of the hull every month or so, which for bilge keelers is easy on the Club slipway. The Super Seals can pull the boat over by the hounds with a line to the shore. My Parker 275 is a bit heavy for that, without a block and tackle and three strong men. I have heard of people using a strip of carpet as a friction band passing beneath the hull. What do you do?

Kate

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Hi Kate

I have a strip of carpet a couple of metres long and attathed to a rope at each end. You feed it under the boat with a rope up each side and pull back and forth to wipe away the fouling trying not to rub too much with just the rope as it tends to cut into the antifouling. It's not a fantastic method but it will do a rough job.

John Williams

275/60 CRYSTAL

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I have one of those "wiper blades" used by window cleaners, which fits over the end of the disassembled inner (hooked) part of a standard two-piece alloy boathook. Used from the dinghy it gets to most bits affected by the light.

Having said that because I launched late this year, and have sailed every weekend but one since, there is only a slimy line along the waterline and irregular patches of slime elsewhere, so I haven't used it yet this year!

It used to produce reasonable results on the previous boat.

275/30 "Cascada"

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Hi Kate as the super seals ballast is all fixed in the bilges i would have thought they would be harder to tilt than the 275 with its keel raised as alot more ballast is in the keel thereby raising the cog.

Although i may be completely wrong.

Good point Sean but my observation is that the all up weight of my Parker 275 is significantly more than the Super Seal. Anyone got the figures for them?

Kate

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Hi Kate. I don't get too much anything on my (OK, my boat's) hull during a season. Vol-au-vent is on a drying pontoon so the anti foul manufactures recommend a hard anti foul paint. Wrong! Cruiser Uno, an eroding anti-foul, works perfectly. - Ken

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