Alex…I was the guy in Nashville, TN that had my aluminum sailboat painted with E-Paint ZO…
…we have a couple of very different boats. My wife’s boat is a little 31 foot trailerable catamaran-hulled houseboat that has fiberglass hulls. It was moored in the adjacent slip to “my” aluminum sailboat after both had just had recent bottom jobs…the sailboat with ZO and the houseboat with a well-known copper based ablative paint.
They were both launched after painting within a couple of days of each other, as we sometimes keep both in the same marina…we have 3 dogs that go with us, so the little houseboat is great for them while we day sail, or I take the sailboat out and she just “cools out” with the dogs. We do take both out, as the houseboat has an outboard, so it does not sit at the dock all the time.
We just hauled both for the season to winterize them. They had been in the water at Paris Landing Marina on Kentucky Lake (Tennessee River) for about 3 months and used quite a bit during that time. Upon hauling, I was really astonished by the difference in performance of the bottom paints. The ZO had remained virtually free of the slime and algae build-up that is common in this lake, while the copper-based ablative was definitely worse in the that regard. Even other dock residents kept commenting on how clean my sailboat’s bottom was staying!! When I got the sailboat home on her trailer, it only took a light brushing with some car-wash soap and a spritz with the hose to remove a light brown stain the ZO had picked up. Not so with the houseboat’s hulls, which required pressure washing to remove the algae and slime they were carrying.
Needless to say, the houseboat will also be getting ZO for the next bottom job!
Here’s a shot of the sailboat BEFORE we cleaned her up…you can see that the bottom is quite clean just as she came out of the water!
Thanks for your help and advice…and a truly fine product!
Rob and Gabi Hoffman
S/V “CanCan” and houseboat “Cloud Nine”