11th Mar 2022
Antifouling is one of the most important tasks of the boat maintenance cycle - as without it, barnacles, algae, slime and various other organisms may attach to your hull. This will result in performance defects including fuel economy and speed, plus a hefty bill to remove the fouling once the boat is back out of the water. In this post, we’ll be looking at how much it costs to antifoul a boat, and the factors that will affect that cost.
Factors That Affect The Cost Of Antifouling A Boat
There are a number of factors that will affect the cost of antifouling a boat. Because of this, the figure will not be the same for every boat.
Let’s take a look at the key factors:
Boat Size:
We’ll start with the most obvious, which is the size of your boat. With a typical tin of antifouling covering 9 square metres per litre and a certain thickness required for each coat, the size of your boat is the biggest dictator in the cost of antifouling your boat. If you are going to purchase Seajet antifouling, we highly recommend checking out their paint calculator.
Number Of Coats:
Although some antifoulings (such as Seajet Coastal 037 and Hempel Tiger Xtra) only require one coat, many require 2-3 for a season. The more coats required, the more antifoul you need, and before you know it, the costs can quickly ramp up. We go further into detail about this in our guide that looks at how much antifouling you need.
Type Of Hull:
Many antifouling paints can only be used on certain substrates. For example, Seajet Coastal and Hempel Cruising Performer cannot be used on aluminium hulls, as direct contact may cause corrosion. This is due to the cuprous oxide biocide within the paint. If you have an aluminium or fibreglass boat, we highly recommend checking out our guides – ‘Antifouling An Aluminium Boat’ and ‘How To Antifoul A Fibreglass Boat’. If you’re unsure, the safest bet is to check the product data sheet – this can be found at the bottom of every product description on our website.
Where You Keep Your Boat:
Like the type of hull you have, this is a variable that more-so decides what antifouling options you have.
If your boat is mud-berthed, we recommend purchasing a hard antifouling, such as Hempel Hard Racing Antifoul, Seajet Coastal Antifoul. This ensures that when the tide rises and you get on your way again, the antifoul will not be eroded by the mud – as it would with a self-polishing antifoul paint like Seajet Shogun 033 Antifoul or Hempel Broads.
What happens when I need to antifoul my boat again?
The condition the existing antifouling is in will dictate the cost of re-applying the paint. If it’s been a couple of years since the initial antifouling was applied and the antifoul has started flaking off when you are sanding the boat down, it may be worth purchasing an antifoul primer, but in most cases you can simply re-apply antifoul over the existing layer(s) of primer.
In some cases, customers do like to apply layer(s) of antifoul primer over their existing antifouling as a tie coat, in order to help the new antifouling adhere to the hull.
If you applied multiple layers of antifouling and it’s still in excellent condition, you can simply touch-up your existing antifoul. We go into more detail about this subject in our ‘How Often Should You Antifoul A Boat?’ blog.
Pirates Cave Provide Quality Antifouling Solutions
Antifouling your boat is far from the cheapest of tasks, but as with the majority of boat maintenance tasks, prevention is far less of an expense than the cure. To save money, we recommend hunting around for deals, such as our antifoul value packs, which offer excellent savings when you purchase two tins of antifoul.
Should you have any questions, our highly experienced team are here to help – contact us today or come and visit our Rochester store, open 7 days a week.
If there’s anything we may have missed, the following articles may be of more help:
