Boat Maintenance

Practical Sailor tested a half-dozen 2- to 3-inch, natural-bristle brushes marketed for use with oil-based coatings. The test field covered a range of bristle types, bristle shapes, handle styles, and prices, representing those most often found in marine chandleries and hardware stores. At paint-makers Interlux and Epifanes' suggestions, we compared good-quality badger-hair and China-bristle brushes when we applied two-part linear polyurethane paints to the fiberglass hull of PS's Catalina 22. The test brushes included the Seafit Flagship badger-hair brushes found at West Marine and made by Red Tree Industries; the Wooster Brush Co.'s white-China bristle brush; the Omega Lily ox-bristle brush available through Epifanes; and a few hardware-store-brand brushes from Ace Hardware, Benjamin Moore Paints, and Purdy Professional Painting Tools.

There are as many different techniques for brush care and cleaning as there are different brushes. Here are some tips that weve found to be effective and fairly easy to carry out.

Brush choice depends on what the brush’s job will be (transferring paint, smoothing paint, etc.), the user’s preferences, and the project budget. The best brush isn’t necessarily the best brush for the project. You wouldn’t use a $40 brush that requires meticulous cleaning to paint the bilge or apply bottom paint, just as you wouldn’t use a throw-away chip brush to lay a final coat of varnish on the toerail—at least we wouldn’t.

Letters to Practical Sailor, April 2011. This month's letters cover subjects such as: WI-FI Solutions, Eco Antifouling, Laser News, Streamlight Headlight and more!

Letters to Practical Sailor, April 2011. This month's letters cover subjects such as: Seas Canvas Boat Covers, Ryamarine, Boatshoes.com and more!

The latest report on our ongoing bottom paint tests, this look at Practical Sailor's antifouling test panels includes 65 hard and ablative paints that have been submerged for 18 months. The test paints include those from Blue Water Paints, Epaints, Flexdel, Interlux, Pettit, Sea Hawk, West Marine, and Copper Coat. An experimental stick-on paint, BoatKote Laminate, was also tested. Some copper-laden perennial favorites again topped the ratings, but some eco-friendly antifoulants from Epaints also did surprisingly well. The report also compares the results of PS's long-term bottom paint test to those of a test conducted by the San Diego Unified Port District and funded by the Environmental Protection Agency. San Diego's “Final Report on Safer Alternatives to Copper Alternatives in Antifouling Paints for Marine Vessels” evaluated how well certain alternative antifouling paints (with limited or no harmful biocides) performed.

Paint companies, boatyards, and boat owners will no doubt be closely checking the impact of an antifouling report issued last month by the San Diego Unified Port District and funded by the Environmental Protection Agency.

The paint samples were applied to 6-foot-by-2-foot fiberglass panels for testing. Testers follow the makers’ instructions for preparation and application. There were 11 samples per test panel. All but two samples had two coats of paint.

All the battery-powered vacuums were tested with brand-new batteries charged to their makers’ specs and brand-new filters. We put them through a series of simple bench tests and real-world use.

Anchor lockers are a convenience to coastal cruisers but no friend to offshore sailors. Passagemakers often forgo a deck-clearing locker for a belowdecks anchor-chain well. An angled spill pipe leads the anchor chain from the deck to the well, which often is under the forepeak and behind a watertight bulkhead. The setup not only eliminates the flooded-bow worries inherent with an on-deck locker, but it also moves the chain and anchors’ weight lower and further aft, where it should be to avoid hobby-horsing.