The propeller's worst friend

IN THE YEARS I have been writing about sailing, I have come across many suggestions for preventing barnacles from attaching themselves to propellers. One friend of mine swore by axle grease that he stole from the marine railway when his boat was hauled out for antifouling. He would smear thick gobs of it on his prop just before launch time.

Other people advise you to use carnauba wax, or zinc paint. I myself have tried two coats of copper antifouling paint. It worked for a while, but eventually wore off. I’m told the backroom boys are working on a way to apply a Teflon coating to a bronze propeller, so barnacles simply won’t be able to stick to it. But so far none of these remedies has worked satisfactorily in all waters. The very action of a propeller working in water quickly abrades whatever coating you apply.

There is one trick that really does work, and that is to tie a black plastic bag around the prop each time you reach your home mooring or slip. Some fanatical racers do that, but I’m sure you can see the problems, not the least of which is to remember to remove the bag before you set off again.

There is a theory that barnacles will not touch a prop that isn’t protected by a sacrificial zinc. Apparently the tiny electric currents generated in the bronze of an unprotected propeller are sufficient to deter them, and convince them to move to the boat next door whose propeller is nice and docile, thanks to its sacrificial zinc.

No doubt you can spot the problem, here, though. The electric currents that keep the barnacles away are also slowly eating the propeller away. Maybe if you can afford a new propeller every couple of years you can live a lovely life free of worry about barnacles. If not, you, like most, will just have to put up with an increasing number of barnacle squatters and a corresponding decrease in motoring speed as time goes by.

You can, of course, dive and scrape off the barnacles from time to time if you sail in warm waters. But if you live in the frigid zone of Puget Sound like me, then grinding your teeth and swearing in a sailorly fashion seems to be all there is to do about it until the next haulout. You might find, though, that the occasional beer or Dark ’n Stormy helps.

Today’s Thought

Though you drive away nature with a pitchfork, she always returns.

— Horace, Epistles, 1, x

Tailpiece

“Why has your dog got such a flat nose?”

“He keeps chasing parked cars.”

(Drop by every Monday, Wednesday, Friday for another  Mainly about Boats column.)

The suicidal barnacle problem

I HAVE ANTI-FOULING PAINT on my mind. The authorities in charge of all living things in the water have banned the use of certain bottom paints for yachts because they are toxic to sea life. Probably the most effective of these anti-fouling paints was based on tin, and that is almost completely forbidden now unless you have an aluminum boat.

 You may well ask where the logic is in banning copper paint because it’s toxic. Lots of things are toxic. Handguns are toxic to human beings, for example, but we don’t ban them. Not in this country, anyway.

But more is to come. The bottom-paint police are now considering banning copper paint, too. I don’t know of any viable alternative to copper paint for most of us — and by viable I mean compatibly priced and easy to apply — so it appears our underwater hulls are doomed to play host to great colonies of barnacles.

Now, there is a point that the bottom-paint police seem to have overlooked. These sea creatures they’re so concerned about are not helpless. They have a choice. They are not forced to attach themselves to your hull. Nobody tells them they have to live there. They have the whole sea to choose from, billions of welcoming rocks and sunny beaches, concrete seawalls, and lovely wooden piles; and if they have any of the sense of survival that Nature is supposed to have instilled in them, they will carefully avoid the comparatively tiny number of boat bottoms painted with copper paint. Those creatures without that sense of survival (and there do seem to be some) surely deserve what they get, and their suicidal genes should not be passed on to future generations.

It is difficult to perceive what part is played in the great business of life on earth by barnacles, and their cousins, limpets, and their low-life relations, brown and green slime. I seem to remember a hymn about all things wise and wonderful, all creatures great and small, but the voice of experience tells me that not all creatures great and small are wise and wonderful. And that applies especially to the barnacles and slime that attempt to fasten their useless selves to boats.

Let us not forget that Whoever or Whatever created barnacles also created copper, and nowhere in the good book does it say the twain shall never meet. Let Nature take its course, I say. Let copper keep boat bottoms clean. Let all wise and wonderful barnacles go and live somewhere else, and let Nature remove the dumb and unwonderful ones in the old approved manner.

Today’s Thought
Nature is that lovely lady to whom we owe polio, leprosy, smallpox, syphilis, tuberculosis, cancer.

—Dr. Stanley N. Cohen, geneticist, Stanford

(He forgot barnacles. —JV)

Tailpiece

“You in trouble with the IRS again?”

“Yeah, they disallowed my medical expenses.”

“What medical expenses?”

“Five hundred dollars for the tooth fairy.”

(Drop by every Monday, Wednesday, Friday for a new Mainly about Boats column.)

Barnacles on my mind

THE AUTHORITIES IN CHARGE of all living things in the water have banned the use of certain bottom paints for yachts because they are toxic to sea life. Probably the most effective of these anti-fouling paints was based on tin, and that is almost completely forbidden now unless you have an aluminum boat, which is allergic to the ubiquitous copper-based anti-fouling paint.


The latest news I hear is that the bottom-paint police are now considering banning copper paint, too. I don’t know of any viable alternative to copper paint for most of us — and by viable I mean compatibly priced and easy to apply — so it appears our underwater hulls are doomed to play host to great colonies of barnacles. Any hull roughened in that way creates a great deal of resistance to movement through water. Those barnacles will slow our boats drastically under sail, and send fuel bills skyrocketing under power.


Now, there is a point here that the bottom-paint police seem to have overlooked. These sea creatures they’re so concerned about are not helpless. They have a choice. They are not forced to attach themselves to my hull. Nobody tells them they have to live there. They have the whole sea to choose from, billions of welcoming rocks and sunny beaches, concrete seawalls, and lovely wooden piles; and if they have any of the sense of survival that Nature is supposed to have instilled in them, they will carefully avoid the comparatively tiny number of boat bottoms painted with copper paint. Those without that sense of survival (and there do seem to be some) surely deserve what they get, and their suicidal genes should not be passed on to future generations.


It is difficult to perceive what part is played in the great business of life on earth by barnacles, and their cousins, limpets, and their low-life relations, brown and green slime. I seem to remember a hymn about all things wise and wonderful, all creatures great and small, but the voice of experience tells me that not all creatures great and small are wise and wonderful. And that applies especially to the barnacles and slime that attempt to fasten their useless, loathsome, parasitic selves to boats.


Let us not forget that Whoever or Whatever created barnacles also created copper, and nowhere in the good book does it say the twain shall never meet. Let Nature take its course, I say. Let copper keep my bottom clean. Let all wise and wonderful barnacles go and live somewhere else, and let Nature remove the dumb and unwonderful ones in her own way.



Today’s Thought
Nature is that lovely lady to whom we owe polio, leprosy, smallpox, syphilis, tuberculosis, cancer.
—Dr. Stanley N. Cohen, geneticist, Stanford.
(He forgot to mention barnacles. —JV)



Tailpiece
“You in trouble with the IRS again?”
“Yeah, they disallowed my medical expenses.”
“What medical expenses?”
“Five hundred dollars for the tooth fairy.”

Barnacles and retirement plans

SOMETIMES I REALLY REGRET that I find myself writing books and articles and columns about boats. The market for this kind of stuff is so small. I mean, if I had concentrated on writing about gardening or the bad habits of movie stars, things that fascinate almost everybody, I’d be rich and famous by now. I’d be lolling on the beach outside one of those $1,000-a-night cabins at the Bitter End Yacht Club in the British Virgin Islands. Sigh.

It’s hard to underestimate the intelligence of average Americans, which makes them prefer gardening and wicked movie stars to sailing, but it’s a fact of life that I have to live with.

And talking about gardening, it has not escaped my attention that I would be far better off if I were selling stuff instead of writing stuff, and in particular selling stuff to stop the goddam deer eating my one and only rose bush. I don’t believe deer should be roaming the gardens of this busy city of 80,000 people, eating the rose bushes of honest citizens and acting with all the impunity of royal game. I am not in favor of it. I believe deer who act badly should be turned into jerky, and I have a good recipe for that. But our city fathers are a wimpish lot and have kowtowed to the loud and troublesome anti-jerky faction, so that it is now illegal to kill a deer in cold blood, even if you catch him in flagrante delicto with your only rose bush halfway down his greedy gizzard.

Anyway, the best stuff I know for stopping deer eating your roses is cougar urine. If I had any business sense I would be selling bottles of cougar urine for all those millions of keen rose gardeners to spray on their bushes now and then. Not real cougar urine, of course, because it’s tricky to get a cougar to pee into a bottle. Just ordinary tap water with a dash of yellow food coloring. Enough to fool most of the people most of the time, until you can catch the plane to the Virgin Islands.

However, because I’m stuck in the boating niche, and therefore by definition don’t have much sense, perhaps I should stick to the boating equivalent of pestiferous deer, i.e., barnacles — particularly those barnacles that infest propellers. There’s a fortune to be made for somebody who discovers a way to discourage barnacles from making themselves at home on props.

Surely there must be some sort of creepy-crawly crustacean whose presence turns your average barnacle white with fright and sends him scuttling off in a panic. There must be something, the mere smell of which would discourage a barnacle from adhering himself to your prop. All we have to do is find this creature and make him pee in a bottle so we can sell the spray and retire to the Bitter End Yacht Club. It’s not too much to ask, surely?

Today’s Thought
An idea can turn into dust or magic, depending on the talent that rubs against it.
— William Bernbach.

Boaters’ Rules of Thumb, #206
In general, two engines are not twice as good as one, whether they’re inboards or outboards. Added weight, added friction in drive trains, and added underwater drag are formidable prices to pay. Thus, the rule of thumb is that a twin-screw installation wastes about 20 percent of the power available, compared with a single engine of comparable horsepower.

Milestone 400
WE REACHED another little milestone today. This is the 400th Mainly about Boats column. You’ll find every one of them over there on the right if you click on the little arrows. Go right ahead. Explore this fascinating little treasure trove of nautical knowledge before a new Judgment Day comes along and whisks them all off for burning in the fires of Hell. Read ’em quick while you still have a chance. No advertisements, you’ll notice, no begging for money, no misspelled words, no hanging participles or split infinitives. Only good pure grammar, and every one guaranteed to bring you rapture.

Tailpiece
A young woman went to the doctor complaining of aches and pains. “I think I’ve got the swine flu,” she said.
“Swine flu nothing,” the doctor said. “That’s not swine flu. That’s Egyptian flu — you’re going to be a mummy.”

(Drop by every Monday, Wednesday, Friday, for a new Mainly about Boats column.)

Beware the barnacles

(Come back every Monday, Wednesday, Friday for a new Mainly about Boats column.)

IN THE WAKE of the Great Egg Recall, the Food and Drug Administration is warning boat owners that certain species of barnacles may now be infected with a virulent strain of salmonella. Widespread reports from marine repair facilities on the East and West Coasts indicate that groups of affected barnacles — known as barnacella — produce acids that can damage wooden and fiberglass hulls.

Twenty mysterious sinkings, originally blamed on polyestermites, have now been ascribed to barnacella acid that ate through the boats’ hulls under water. More sinkings are expected as the disease spreads.

Insurance companies are warning that barnacella sinkings are not covered under the terms of regular yacht policies. “Even if you have an all-risks policy, we regard this as an Act of God, and therefore we reject liability,” an industry spokesman said.

The FDA urged boatowners not to panic. “Only wood and fiberglass boats whose hulls have barnacles will be affected,” the agency said in a press release issued late yesterday. “We are devoting our full resources to investigating this unfortunate outbreak. Meanwhile we recommend that all boat owners inspect their bottoms for barnacles and boil them if necessary.”

Today’s Thought
Whatever befalls in accordance with Nature should be accounted good.
— Cicero, De Senectute

Boaters’ Rules of Thumb, #87
If it ain’t broke, break it before you fix it.

Tailpiece
“I saw you smash that clock, sir, I’m arresting you for killing time.”
“Nonsense, officer, it was self-defense. The clock struck first.”

Barnacles on my mind

WHEN YOUR AUXILIARY ENGINE seems to be working reasonably well, but the boat just isn’t going as fast as usual, start thinking about barnacles. Just a few barnacles can drastically reduce the efficiency of the average sailboat propeller.

It’s one of the facts of life that a big, slow-turning prop is (with a few exceptions) more efficient that a small, fast-turning egg-beater. But a big prop on a sailboat obviously causes more drag than a small one, so the size of the prop is a compromise, as usual.

In my experience, most props on cruising boats are fixed two- or three-bladers and, because they are comparatively small, they need to be very efficient to produce all the thrust the engine is capable of. That means their compound curves should be as smooth as possible to develop the necessary hydrodynamic “lift.”

Unfortunately, barnacles seem to have made it their mission in life to attach themselves with very strong glue to any nice, clean, smooth, hydrodynamically perfect propeller that comes their way, thereby destroying its efficiency. Given a chance, barnacles will colonize a propeller with such zeal that it resembles nothing more than a jagged lump of coral.

And such is their dedication to their mission in life that they will remain attached no matter how fast the propeller spins. It must take tremendous willpower not to get dizzy and fall off when you are whirred around at 1,500 revolutions a minute – that’s 25 times in every second – but somehow barnacles manage it. Perhaps they turn their little heads in the way prima ballerinas do when they spin on tippy-toe, but as far as I know nobody has ever verified this scientifically.

In the years I have been writing about sailing, I have come across many suggestions for preventing barnacles from attaching themselves to propellers. One friend of mine swore by axle grease that he stole from the marine railway when his boat was hauled out for antifouling. He would smear thick gobs of it on his prop just before launch time.

Other people advise you to use carnauba wax, or zinc paint. I myself have tried two coats of copper antifouling paint. I’m told the backroom boys are working on a way to apply a Teflon coating to a bronze propeller, so barnacles simply won’t be able to stick to it. But so far none of these remedies has worked satisfactorily in all waters. The very action of a propeller working in water quickly abrades whatever coating you apply.

There is one trick that really does work, and that is to tie a black plastic bag around the prop each time you reach your home mooring or slip. Some fanatical racers do that, but I’m sure you can see the problems, not the least of which is to remember to remove the bag before you set off again.

There is a theory that barnacles will not touch a prop that isn’t protected by a sacrificial zinc. Apparently the tiny electric currents generated in the bronze of an unprotected propeller are sufficient to deter them, and convince them to move to the boat next door whose propeller is nice and docile, thanks to its sacrificial zinc.

No doubt you can spot the problem, here, though. The electric currents that keep the barnacles away are also slowly eating the propeller away. Maybe if you can afford a new propeller every couple of years you can live a lovely life free of worry about barnacles. If not, you, like the rest of us, will just have to put up with an increasing number of barnacle squatters and a corresponding
decrease in motoring speed as time goes by.

You can, of course, dive and scrape off the barnacles from time to time if you sail in warm waters. But if you live in the frigid zone of Puget Sound like me, then grinding your teeth and swearing in a sailorly fashion seems to be all there is to do about it until the next haulout. I do find, though, that the occasional glass of port helps.

Today’s Thought
Though you drive away nature with a pitchfork, she always returns.
—Horace, Epistles, 1, x

Tailpiece
“Why has your dog got such a flat nose?”
“He keeps chasing parked cars.”

Scraping the barnacles

I GOT QUITE excited when my local newspaper ran an advertisement for a “Marine Growth Scraper” for the city marina. I thought I was going to get the barnacles scraped off my bottom for free.

But no such luck. This Marine Growth Scraper is not going to scrape seaweed and mollusks off boats at all. The ad says the MGS will work 40 hours a week “to remove marine growth from docks and utilities.”

I don’t doubt that there will be people lining up for this position, given the number of people looking for work around here, but the port authority’s advertisement was refreshingly candid about the hardships involved. “Position requires strenuous labor outdoors in adverse weather conditions,” it says.

And what does a marine growth scraper earn? $10 an hour, apparently, and only for 90 days, because it’s a temporary job.

I deduce from this that it’s going to cost marina tenants $4,800 to have the barnacles scraped off their floating concrete docks. I never realized this had to be done. I’ve never heard of a concrete dock sinking because of the weight of the barnacles attached.

In fact, I have an engineer friend who once designed floating docks and I asked him whether barnacles could sink a dock. “No problem,” he said, “it’s self-limiting. The layers of barnacles never grow beyond a certain thickness. Just look at any rock on the beach, or piling in the water.”

So now I’m quite curious about why we’re suddenly having our barnacles scraped. Is this part of Mr. Obama’s recovery package, perhaps, a make-work project, or is there a real reason for it? Anyone got any ideas?

And if we taxpayers are footing the bill, can’t I have my bottom scraped, too?

Today’s Thought
I go on working for the same reason that a hen goes on laying eggs. —H. L. Mencken.

Tailpiece
A friend of mine says his wife finally managed to understand the difference between a food processor and a word processor.

“It’s great,” he said, “she doesn’t mince her words any more.”

Barnacles on my mind

I had meant to write something useful for sailors today. It seems a long time since I did that. I was thinking of doing a piece on how to heave to under sail, or why your magnetic compass often shows a different heading from your GPS. But I overthought and got ahead of myself. I got to thinking about barnacles and slime instead.

The authorities in charge of all living things in the water have banned the use of certain bottom paints for yachts because they are toxic to sea life. Probably the most effective of these anti-fouling paints was based on tin, and that is almost completely forbidden now unless you have an aluminum boat, which is allergic to the ubiquitous copper-based anti-fouling paint.

The latest news I hear is that the bottom-paint police are now considering banning copper paint, too. I don’t know of any viable alternative to copper paint for most of us — and by viable I mean compatibly priced and easy to apply — so it appears our underwater hulls are doomed to play host to great colonies of barnacles. Any hull roughened in that way creates a great deal of resistance to movement through water. Those barnacles will slow our boats drastically under sail, and send fuel bills skyrocketing under power.

Now, there is a point here that the bottom-paint police seem to have overlooked. These sea creatures they’re so concerned about are not helpless. They have a choice. They are not forced to attach themselves to my hull. Nobody tells them they have to live there. They have the whole sea to choose from, billions of welcoming rocks and sunny beaches, concrete seawalls, and lovely wooden piles; and if they have any of the sense of survival that Nature is supposed to have instilled in them, they will carefully avoid the comparatively tiny number of boat bottoms painted with copper paint. Those without that sense of survival (and there do seem to be some) surely deserve what they get, and their suicidal genes should not be passed on to future generations.

It is difficult to perceive what part is played in the great business of life on earth by barnacles, and their cousins, limpets, and their low-life relations, brown and green slime. I seem to remember a hymn about all things wise and wonderful, all creatures great and small, but the voice of experience tells me that not all creatures great and small are wise and wonderful. And that applies especially to the barnacles and slime that attempt to fasten their useless, loathsome, parasitic selves to my boat.

Let us not forget that Whoever or Whatever created barnacles also created copper, and nowhere in the good book does it say the twain shall never meet. Let Nature take its course, I say. Let copper keep my bottom clean. Let all wise and wonderful barnacles go and live somewhere else, and let Nature remove the dumb and unwonderful ones in her own way.

Today’s Thought
Nature is that lovely lady to whom we owe polio, leprosy, smallpox, syphilis, tuberculosis, cancer. —Dr. Stanley N. Cohen, geneticist, Stanford.
(He forgot to mention barnacles. —JV)

Tailpiece
“You in trouble with the IRS again?”
“Yeah, they disallowed my medical expenses.”
“What medical expenses?”
“Five hundred dollars for the tooth fairy.”