Coppercoat Antifouling Review: Did you know that when applied correctly CopperCoat Antifoul can last more than 10 years? Instead of having to haul your boat out every year (or every other year) imagine not having the hassle or the expense at all.
The biggest draw of CopperCoat to us was the ultimate savings we’d experience over the long run.
With a world circumnavigation on the cards, we didn’t want to have to haul out in distant foreign lands. We wanted to head west and just keep on sailing.
The cost of having our boat craned out, spray washed, put on the hard, and antifouling paint applied wasn’t cheap. Furthermore, we’re liveaboards so we had to either live on the boat on the hard (if allowed) or pay for alternate accommodation. CopperCoat would make our lives easier.
Another benefit of CopperCoat is the increase in the speed that you’ll appreciate. With CopperCoat you’ll go around 1/2 knot faster. That means it’s quicker for you to get to where we want to go!
But our reality of CopperCoat was nothing but a mess.
We have several years of updates regarding two failed applications and a couple of touch-up jobs. We fell out with the USA CopperCoat representative and engaged in discussions with the UK Company – the company that actually manufactures the paint.
In order for you to get the full story, I’ve outlined all our videos and articles below. If you want more information on any particular part of the story, you can click over to dive deeper.
Britican – just before being loaded onto the crane to go back into the water
September 2016 – Our First Failed Application by Bennett Brothers in Wilmington, North Carolina
You’ll benefit by watching this CopperCoat antifouling review video:
- By seeing how to get to Bennett Brothers on the Cape Fear marina. If you’re going to go there yourself it’s always nice to see what the set-up is so you know what to expect. There’s a bridge you have to go under while it opens. The crane area is right along the river. Once you enter the crane area there are two concrete jetties on either side and you have to throw lines to both sides.
- You’ll get some tips as to how to prepare your boat if you’re going to leave it for a while on the hard.
- We had issues getting our boat up high enough – the backstay and boom had to be relaxed.
- Around the 13-minute mark, you see what the boat looked like stripped back to the fiberglass hull and the process required to test the moisture level in the hull. Otherwise, I include a bit of information about being with my family and what we got up to.
Watch here: CopperCoat Antifoul Failure
September 2017 – An Update On Our CopperCoat Results One Year Later
One year after our CopperCoat application we started contacting Bennett Brothers Yachts to seek some sort of solution to our failed Coppercoat application. At first, the boatyard asked us to return and they’d fix the issue but they then pulled back and started to blame the product.
We got the USA representative from Coppercoat involved and he stated that it was most certainly a bad application. Both the boatyard and the product manufacturer were blaming each other. We were out of pocket by $11,700 and had a hull full of barnacles!
Get the full CopperCoat antifouling review story, up to this point, by reading Our CopperCoat Antifoul Problems – there’s a video too.
October 2017 – CopperCoat USA & Bennet Brothers Work To Rectify Our Issues
Eventually, both CopperCoat USA and Bennet Brothers Yachts agreed to pay for our boat to come out and fix any issues if there were any. We arranged for things to get done in our local area and flew away to see Simon’s father in the UK. By taking a vacation we had a place to live while the boat was on the hard.
When the boat came out, it was full of barnacles. Jim from CopperCoat USA explained that Bennett Brothers did a poor job but not all was lost. The boatyard simply needed to add more paint in some areas and sand better in others. So…we went to the UK and under the supervision of CopperCoat USA our hull was supposedly fixed.
To see our boat hauled out in Charleston and the USA representative from CopperCoat inspect the hull, watch our sailing Vlog episode that covers our CopperCoat antifouling review entitled: Liveaboard Life
July 2018 – Haul Out In Trinidad & Tobago – All The Patches Were Barnacle Free But the Rest of the Boat was Full of Barnacles!
Our next major update about our CopperCoat antifoul nightmare was when we hauled out in Trinidad. We sailed all the way from America down to the top of South America. Considering that we were on the move for the whole time you’d think that barnacles would haven’t the chance to form on our hull!
Unbelievably, all the work that Jim from CopperCoat USA had Bennett Brothers Yachts do worked. But it was only the patches that were done.
Doesn’t that make you wonder why Jim didn’t have the boatyard simply redo the entire boat? That’s the big question.
Long-story shorter… Jim refused to talk to us anymore. We then had to go to CopperCoat UK, the manufacturers and ask them for help. We showed them the footage of all our great patch jobs and they offered to send us a whole new batch of paint. Our plan was to get the whole boat redone.
We had to pay $3,000 in labor costs but the paint was free. We knew the product worked because the patches were barnacle free.
Peke’s Boatyard in Trinidad & Tobago did our second full application. And guess what?! IT FAILED AGAIN.
To view our haul out in Trinidad and get more information about the second failed application in our CopperCoat antifouling review, watch the second video on our Trinidad & Tobago Destinations section entitled Haul Out Trinidad & Tobago.
August 2019 – Evidence of our Failed Peake’s Boatyard Application and Attempted Sanding Touch-up in Antigua.
Once again we had another failed CopperCoat antifoul application. At this point, we were really about to lose the plot. Was it the application or was it the product? What did Jim from CopperCoat USA do that made the patches work? Why did Bennett Brothers fail and now it was looking like the Peke’s application failed? Why, why why?
In a final attempt to get closure on our CopperCoat issues, I made a video entitled ‘CopperCoat Antifoul Disaster’ where we highlighted all of our problems in a specific Coppercoat only video. The video proved to be quite popular.
Watch the video to see:
- our first CopperCoat application in North Carolina
- a haul out in South Carolina for CopperCoat USA to inspect issues and instigate fixes from the original boatyard
- underwater footage of the hull after the fixes
- the hull after our haul out in Trinidad & Tobago
- another full application of CopperCoat (product paid for by CopperCoat UK)
- underwater footage a month after the last application
- the hull after our haul out in Antigua
- underwater footage of our hull after another sanding in Antigua
You can see both the August and September 2019 videos here: CopperCoat Antifouling Solution
September 2019 – Arrangements for CopperCoat UK To Come To Grenada
One of the owners of CopperCoat UK offered to pay for us to have another antifoul product applied to our boat OR he offered to come himself to Grenada to supervise one last and finally application himself.
We felt so invested that we decided to get one final application of CopperCoat and created a quick update video to announce our decision.
You can see both the August and September 2019 CopperCoat Antifouling Review videos here: CopperCoat Antifouling Solution
November 2019 – Our Third & Final CopperCoat Antifoul Application by Mr CopperCoat Himself
This video shows the owner of CopperCoat UK applying the product. It’s full of tips and gives an overview of where things might go wrong and what to do to avoid issues. Watch this video if you’re actively learning about applying the product yourself.
Watch here: CopperCoat Application
June 2020 – The Results Of Our Third Full CopperCoat Application Are…?!?!?!
Here’s our final summary video showcasing clips from the whole saga start to finish with our final results – CopperCoat Problems Solved.
Tips To Avoid CopperCoat Problems
And make sure to read our article entitled: 7 CopperCoat Tips For A Successful Application
Any Questions or Comments About our CopperCoat Antifouling Review?
Please leave them below.
I own a boat, finding boat care services cost me a lot of time and money. I have tried the coppercoat service. This application makes my life much easier and saves me a lot of money in maintaining the boats.
How about now several years later? How is it doing? And how about in different water conditions/temps? That seems to be the real test. Thanks.
After our last application in Grenada we had several blisters along the waterline and we still had to scrape the bottom of the boat every month. It was ‘easy’ to get the growth off, however, it took a couple hours using dive tanks and a scraper or we had to pay someone to do it. Kim
Thank you, Kim. This has been our experience as well. (We documents some of our experiences: https://coppercoat.brucebalan.com/). We are 1 month out from hauling here in New Zealand and trying to decide whether to go with Coppercoat again.
It’s a difficult decision…
Appreciate the info.
Best,
Bruce
sv Migration
There are too many cases where it goes wrong. When we get our next boat we will not invest in CopperCoat. I wish you all the best Bruce! Smiles, Kim