The Anti Fouling Challenge
It's year three of the first of the Free as the Wind product challenges. Anti fouling paint has to be a prime candidate for the tests as it is one of those products where there are offerings from several differnt manufacturers at very different prices.
This year we are testing a new, modern paint, Blakes Ocean. We also have the results of last years test.
This year we are testing another high-performance paint, Blakes Ocean. Unfortunately we can't perform a side-by-side test of it with Optima due to the costs involved, so the judgement on performance will be more subjective than usual. Last year's we tested a high-performance paint against a traditional one, the year before two traditional paints from different manufacturers.
The idea is to build up a comparison of differnet paints over time, by testing two differnt brands on the same hull each season. In addition we will overlap the paints so that one of them will stay the same between two tests -allowing us to build up relative comparisons of the sort where if A is better than B and B is better than C then A must be better than C, you see!
We aim to make the conditions as fair as possible between the contestants, 'Touchstone' lives on a swinging mooring, so I feel that painting one side with HS3000 and the other with Cruiser Premium should give them an equal chance over a season. If the boat lived in a marina then this might not be the case and it would perhaps be better to paint in quarters so that the port bow and starboard stern were one paint and the rest the other. If there were two people in a marina anti-fouling at the same time then one brand on one side of the boat and the other on the other side would work, as long as they were reversed for the second boat. Alternitavely a slightly 'weaker' test would be to use one brand on one boat and another on the second would work if the two owners did the same sort of sailing in the year.
Finally, anyone else who's anti fouling please join in and get in touch, the more people who take part in the tests the quicker we'll build up a usefull resource.
On to the Anti fouling tests :
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Last Updated 10/4/2003 ©Free as the Wind 2001, 2002, 2003 |