Yesterday I had the rare opportunity to enjoy a sunny afternoon at Dell Quay Yacht Yard. Whilst there I took a few pictures of some of the boats present using Coppercoat™. These boats included the owner of the yards personal fishing boat and a yacht I remember supplying 20 years ago. I was pleased to see and hear how well these boats are performing. I must get out more often! (Please note the boats which are still brown are newly treated and yet to be launched and hence have yet to turn to the normal verdigris colour.)

We are delighted to have won the prestigious Eco Friendly Business category of the Asian Marine & Boating Awards 2011, held in conjunction with the China (Shanghai) International Boat Show. The award was presented to Nigel MacFarlane (Coppercoat™ representative for Hong Kong) by Yang Xin Fa (Secretary General of the Chinese Boatbuilding Association) at a gala dinner at the Four Seasons Hotel in Shanghai.

It is very rare for any anti-foul to receive an award for being environmentally friendly, so this is a major coup for us and welcome recognition that Coppercoat™ is an environmentally sensible choice.

By commonly remaining effective for between 10 to 20 years, anti-fouling a boat once with low-leaching Coppercoat™ is clearly far more responsible than re-anti-fouling every year with a standard eroding anti-foul paint. And you don’t have 10 to 20 years worth of painting apparel such as rollers, brushes, tins and plastic paints trays to bury in a landfill site either!

At the recent London Boat Show it was great to catch up with old customers, Sue and Stuart from Sails and Summits, who Coppercoated their Dufour 455 ”Esseness” 3 years ago. They were planning on lifting her out for her first lift since being treated and promised to send us pictures of the results. Whilst we don’t as a rule recommend that you leave a  boat in the water for 3 years without a clean, it does show what Coppercoat™ is capable of. If you are looking for a holiday with a difference, why not check out their website www.sailsandsummits.co.uk/

Below are the pictures of “Esseness” when lifted:

As many of you will have seen in the past, there are always a good number of new boats treated with Coppercoat™ at boat shows all around the world. During a quiet five minutes at the recent London International Boat show, I took the opportunity to take a few pictures of some of the boats present treated with Coppercoat™. If any of you have any more pictures of boats showing off their Coppercoat™, please email them to me at info@coppercoat.com. Just some of the manufacturers we currently supply at a build stage are Sessa, Sunseeker, Cornish Crabbers, Solaris, Southerly, Najad, Discovery and Hanse.

The Medway (or as it’s known locally, The Mudway!) is a notoriously bad area in the UK for marine fouling. The following picture was posted on a well known yachting forum.  It is rare to have Coppercoat™ tested against a traditional antifoul on the same boat. By the way, Coppercoat™ is the clean product on the keel not the barnacle covered blue product on the hull…!

Here is a copy of the post:

With Coppercoat™ having distributors in more than 30 countries worldwide, we are being represented at many international Boat Shows across the globe. Our Germany Distributor, Michael Fleiss has just finished exhibiting at the Hanseboot  Boat Show (Hamburg) and our Spanish Distributor, Jaime Capell is currently exhibiting at the Barcelona Boat Show.

The next boat shows on our calendar are Paris Nautic (4^th-12^th Dec 2010) being attended by Pascal Masson , our French Distributor and then the London International Boat Show (7^th-16^th Jan 2011) where we will be attending ourselves.

For information on our participation at your nearest boat show, please contact us: info@coppercoat.com

Here are a few pictures from Hamburg and Barcelona.

Having been supplying Coppercoat™ for almost 20 years, it is increasingly common for us to hear from customers from our “early days”. Whilst we have already published information on boats treated nearly 20 years ago, we were still delighted with the following email recently received from the owner of a Heavenly Twins Catamaran entering its 15th year with Coppercoat™:

From: Andy M
Sent: 29 October 2010 15:59
To: AMC Office 

Dear Sirs,

I have attached some pictures of our “Summer Twins” catamaran which we antifouled with “Coppercoat™”, supplied by yourselves, 14 years ago. Since then she has had an occasional scrub on a local sand bank but has never been hauled out until now. We have had to haul out this year for other maintenance work, otherwise there would have been no need to haul out.

….

Regards,

Andy M

At todays prices, choosing Coppercoat™ has cost Andy approximately 13p per day. If he had chosen a conventional antifoul, spending around £400 per year on a lift and re-antifoul (not to mention the hard work of having to paint the boat each year!) which equates to £1.08 per day over the same time period. Proving once again that Coppercoat™ provides unbeatable value for money!

Below are the pictures Andy sent us, showing his Coppercoated boat.

Two weeks ago Jayson Kenny and I visited Cobb’s Quay Marina in Poole to check on three boats he and I originally painted with our Coppercoat™ multi-season anti-fouling way back in the winter of 1993/4. I am delighted to report that all three are performing faultlessly some 17 years on! The Coppercoat™ applied all those years ago looks as good as new and we see no reason why the owners should not benefit from at least a further 5 years of first class anti-fouling protection.

When we opened our first office in Cobb’s Quay in 1993 and explained that we were launching an anti-foul that would last for at least 10 years, most boat owners were highly sceptical. Thankfully some brave souls understood the chemistry behind our product and took the plunge. From these pictures you can see how pleased these owners are now!

By not having to anti-foul their boats each season the owners of these boats have saved themselves thousands of Pounds over the years, and have not had to waste a day of each year, roller in hand, re-applying conventional anti-foul.

The downside for us of this longevity is of course that our repeat business cycle is somewhat protracted. It should be at least another 5 years before we can try and sell any more Coppercoat™ to these particular boat owners.

If you like the thought of using Coppercoat™ and consequently not having to re-anti-foul your boat for the next 10 to 20 years, please contact us for a quotation.

Ewan Clark (Director)

As you can imagine with boats changing hands over the years, it is difficult to keep track of some of the first boats treated with Coppercoat™, nearly 20 years ago. However at the 2010 London Boat Show it was my pleasure to meet up with Robert and Ann Burns, who’s 27ft Albin Vega was treated with Coppercoat™ in 1993.  Yesterday they were kind enough to send me an email with some pictures of their boat over the years. Below is a copy of the email:

Dear Tim,

You may remember that we spoke to you at the London Boat Show in January about our experience with Copperbot (now Coppercoat™) on our 27ft Albin Vega.  You asked us to send you some photos of the hull over the years.  Unfortunately we cannot easily find a number of the pictures from some of the intervening years as they are stored away in boxes in the loft.  However, I have some showing our application of Copperbot in 1993 and one after the first season, one 10 years on and one at the present time, 17 years on.

Initially, I was concerned that we had made a sensible decision in moving from the standard antifouling to this new product, but time has proved what a great choice we made.  The time and expense that we have subsequently saved over the years has been substantial and we have been delighted with the product.  It was guaranteed for 5 years in 1993, with an expectation of 10 years, so we are more than pleased to still be going with the original application 17 years on, with only a rub with wet and dry last year to refresh the surface.  During this period we have sailed extensively around the West Coast of Scotland and over to Ireland.

I look forward to seeing you next year at the Boat Show.

Best wishes

Yours sincerely

Bob and Ann

The cost to Coppercoat™ an Albin Vega 27 today is £411.25 (inc VAT). This equates to less than £25 per annum, over 17 years, and saves the hassle of having to repaint the hull each season. If you would like a quote for your boat, please contact us.

In the December 2007 edition of Practical Boat Owner, the editor Sarah Norbury extolls the virtues of Coppercoat™ after a 14-year test on her family boat, a Starlight 39 (moored in the Hamble).

She writes: “One of the most frequently asked questions from PBO readers is “Should I invest in Coppercoat™ antifouling?” So I thought I’d share with you some news from what might be the longest test of Coppercoat™ on a yacht there has ever been. When we ordered a new Sadler Starlight 39 just over 14 years ago, we weren’t intending for her to be a copper antifouling test bed, but somehow, that’s what she’s become!

Until this Autumn she’s never been out of the water for more than 12 hours a year, so our 14 year test really is 14 years, not just 14 summers.

As an experiment we painted the rudder in three vertical stripes: one in Coppercoat™ and two in different top-of-the-range antifoulings. As time went by we regretted this test, beacuse each year we were faced with re-coating the antifouled stripes, whereas the Coppercoat™ just went on working from year to year. However it did show that ageing Coppercoat™ performed as well as new antifouling.

Our experience with Coppercoat™ has been fantastic. In all the 14 years we’ve never had a barnacle, seaweed, nothing except a thin layer of brown slime that simply washes off. It is recommended that each year the Coppercoat™ should be lightly abraded  to expose fresh copper to the surface, but we have never done this simply because we’ve never had the boat out of the water for long enough and it would be hard work!

The original claim for our Coppercoat™ was that it would last 10 years and many people were sceptical. Our test proves the doubters wrong and we’re crossing our fingers our Coppercoat™ will keep doing it’s job for many more years.”