The Bottom Line
H ere in the Crystal River area where we keep our boat, underwater fouling is minimal. This is due to the amount of fresh water we have. Our canal is "brackish" with not alot of salinity and the closer you are to King's Bay and the springs the salinity goes way down. Out to the Gulf and further south, hull bottom fouling becomes worse. Go to the Keys and the Bahamas and it is very aggressive. Wintertime when the water is cold, the growth is minimal, but when the water warms it is alive with billions of tiny organisms ready to cling to something and start reproducing. Now that our boat is in Tampa Bay and the water temperature is moving into the 70's the growth is accelerating. How do we combat this? The list of ways is endless but the basic method is to apply Anti-Fouling coatings. Bottom paint. There is a whole science and tons of info about anti-fouling coatings so I won't go into all of it but basically there are 2 types of paint. Hard & Ablative. Bot