well it must be Tuesday again the Blue Angels are out welcome to sailing vessel Seeker here
in sunny Pensacola Florida where we're getting entertained by the Blue Angels
we draw plenty of Spectators all the locals come out about this time of day and I'm waiting
on parts for the autopilot so it's time to clean the hull it's something that rattles
me a little bit you know I don't mind diving in the hole and I've got uh Brandon and Andy
down there with me too I figure if a shark comes along I only got a one in three chance
right and if I get hit then I got somebody to pull me out but doing it alone
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appreciate the support of friends like Betsy and Charlie Who start sending you articles
about divers cleaning their bows that have been hit by sharks and uh all the black tip
sharks that are currently migrating off the Florida coast here it's quite a sight and
it's uh something that stays in the back of your head so I gotta get used to that you
know best thing to do you got to face it whatever that little thing is it bothers you gotta
do it so here it goes it's time to get in the water the good fish are here
the empty filing we're using is a PPG product it's called ABC3 and it has a quality that
I just love about it in that you don't have to put the boat in the water right after you
put the anti-fouling on uh the anti-fouling was actually put on about three years ago
and it was almost two years before the boat went into the water now we have a whole video
series on the Coatings that went on to Seeker but to shorten it down we sandblasted the
hole we put a cold galvanizing coat on we put a couple of coats of water barrier paint
which is a merit lock too and then we put coal tar on a couple coats of that and pbg's
recommendation for their uh ABC3 product was to put a Fresh coat of coal tar on and then
put the ABC3 on while that coal tar layer was still curing so that they would cross
link and that's what we did and so when you see the hull a couple of years later you can
see where the coal voltar is actually bled through the ABC3 product but that doesn't
seem to have affected its uh performance in water and it's been about 14 months now in
the water about half of that and fresh and half of that and salt and so far I like what
it's doing now they claimed it'll last 10 years and I'm not so sure about that it's
a hard anti-fouling it doesn't ablade really easy so when I run the scraping blade across
it you know I see some of that red tinge come off so I know that it's a bleeding a little
bit now I have had a few areas where the PPG product did come off but I think what my problem
was there is I put it on too heavy now where you see the problem spots on the hull that's
because there's no more anti-fouling there and that's not the fault of the anti-fouling
we ran aground in the Mississippi well actually we've been around several times but the worst
one was in the Mississippi and you know that tore all the anti-fouling off the side of
the Keel here especially where I have all these anemones growing on the whole I think
they're an enemies but anyway that that side of the hole that that starboard Keel Edge
we rubbed off all the anti-fouling I'm surprised we didn't rub off the coal tar and everything
else too but it seems like we still have paint on most of those areas it's a it's a not a
pretty sight when you don't have anti-fouling all right I can get in the water every week
or so and take the chisel down and clean the Barnacles from that area and inside the prop
shroud that's the same issue you know sitting there we were running the prop trying to push
off that sandbar and eventually got off of it but you know during that time we basically
sand blasted the inside of prop shroud and uh the side of the rudder so where the product
is still on the boat seems to be doing really well
now the fouling on the propeller Blaze has been a horrible problem for us this is what
it looks like after three months of not doing anything to him and that took a lot of scraping
to get it off so we decided we're going to use anti-fouling on the prop blades getting
ready to put velox plus uh primer and anti-fouling on the blades they've already been sanded
with a 60 grit orbital sander to give them a profile now they get cleaned up really good
with acetone even where I might touch them have my fingerprints on let that flash off
will be ready to put the primer on baby puke green they want a thin coat so primer dried
three hours this is the first of two coats three hours apart on them too they say put
it on thin first one goes up and down second one goes side to side don't go back over it
too much because this apparently softens up that primer coat too the second coat of the
anti-finalings is most difficult I think is it's hard to see black on black again you
don't want to go over too much it softens up the layer below it
so then we installed the blades man they're doing pretty good it's they've been in the
water for a month now and they have a little bit of Barnacle growth on them the problem
I see is don't scrape them with a chisel to get the little barks off you'll scratch the
anti-fouling off easily the best thing to do is use your fingernails and I also learned
a rag works pretty good at pulling the Barnacles off but the worst thing is is we're losing
some of the anti-fouling right off the blade mainly out of the tips where it must have
come off while it was running there's nothing that's been in there that's hit it so that
just has to be coming off and we haven't run these blades a lot we've only been doing maybe
an hour or so of engine or time on these blades the past month but you can see it's pretty
extensive where it's come off I'm not happy about that so I decided you know I'll try
a little experiment here I've got uh never sees it has copper in it and so I tried rubbing
some of that into the blade I think I got some transferred to it so it might help but
not a lot I'm not uh real confident that that's going to be a solution but you know I fear
something's better than nothing
foreign
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Critters I do enjoy swimming with fish down there they're entertaining they like what
I'm doing too feeding them and I've just been washing them out of my ears but Andy bought
plugs he got me a set too so earplugs and they really do work good but there's a bug
right on the outside of them [Music] I think crawling around in there this time
I like it when the fish are around but when they all dart away at the same time I'm wondering
what did they see I hope it's a dolphin right it's a dolphin isn't it oh
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