Copper based antifoul

[Ozzie]

https://www.seabreeze.com.au/forums/Sai ... and-copper

Just looking at antifoul stuff. As we have many more mooring their boats these days I thought this might be of interest. Coincidentally I was wondering on the pros and cons of copper as an antifoul. Not ah la Captain Cook and the Endeavour with full copper plating but maybe as a copper angle along the edge of the cb slot. Alas my research on Wikipedia confirmed what I suspected copper being the more noble metal would gobble up my gal cb (which has been doing well so far on the mooring) due to electrolysis.

I wonder if copper based af would do the same? Any metallurgical people among you may know. The above link mentioned that you must keep the copper scrubbed to keep the copper active so I guess that may be a clue.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galvanic_corrosion

[Peter T]

Hi Ozzie. I used Copper Kote on my last boat as the original antifouling . Is is an epoxy base loaded with powdered copper. The idea was to put on several coats and then to bare the copper, sanding of the surface was required. Personally, I found it fairly ineffective. The anti fouling properties were weak, did not last anywhere long enough and I was pulling the boat out far too frequently to clean the growth off and sand it a bit more to bare more copper. I guess one advantage of it was that it helped to prevent osmosis due to the epoxy component. I gave up on it. It was quite expensive and then just used International soft anti fouling over the top of it. It would have to be proved to me to be more effective to get me to ever try it again. This is just my personal experience with the product. Perhaps I may have not done something correctly, but that was my experience with it.
Cheers