The Chesapeake Bay is known for brown water and rapid fouling, so any paint that can hang in there for 30 months is doing its job and is a good value. On the other hand, freezing water temperatures and very low salinity knock of a lot of the hard growth off over the winter, so we expect to see fewer barnacles in the spring than in the fall. But by April the days get longer, the bay is up to 50 F in the mainstream and 60 F in the marinas, and soft growth can make a jungle under your boat in no time.
We repainted the test boat with Total Boat Krypton by Jamestown Distributers. After six months it’s still bright green and fast. We pulled the submerged panels up onto the dock, sluiced them off with a bucket a few times from each direction as is our practice (see “Antifouling Paint for Brackish Waters,” December 2023), and graded them for fouling on a 1-5 scale. Because spring fouling is different, our criteria for ratings is slightly adjusted, but blank panels (not anti-fouled) still rate poor and clean panels still rate excellent.
Among ablative paints, high copper paints from Pettit, SeaHawk, and Interlux Paints leading the field. Water based does not seem to be a hindrance, with Interlux Micron WA and Aqua rating excellent. Copper-free Krypton from Jamestown Distributors faded a bit from its early top performance but was still doing well.
Hard paints also benefit from high copper loads, With the Pettit Trinidad products all delivering solid performance, along with Interlux Utra-Kote.
See Table I for both a summary of both 24- and 30-month test results.
The way we see it, any paint that can get you into a third season is a good value and good for the environment. We’re going to leave these panels soaking until we get solid failures all down the line. The winner will be the next paint on our test boat!
| PS Value Guide | Brackish water, Deale, MD | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 30-Month Review | Ablative antifouling paint | ||||||
| Manufacturer | Model | Copper | Zinc | 2-year (panel) | 30-month (panel) | Price (gallon) | |
| Total Boat | Krypton | No | ~ 7% | Very Good | Very Good | $199.00 | R$ |
| Pettit | Odyssey 60* | 60% | ~ 7% | Excellent | Excellent | $264.00 | * |
| Pettit | Odyssey HD* | ~ 40% | ~ 7% | Very Good | Very Good | $232.00 | R |
| Pettit | Odyssey Triton | ~ 40% | ~ 7% | Good | Good | $400.00 | |
| Seahawk | Color Kote | Yes | 10% | Very Good | Good | $245.00 | |
| Seahawk | Cu Kote | 50% | 10% | Excellent | Excellent | $240.00 | * |
| Seahawk | Biocop TF | 60% | 10% | Very Good | Very Good | $280.00 | R |
| Seahawk | Smart Solution | No | No | Good | Very Good | $195.00 | |
| ePaint | EP-21 | No | 50% | Fair | Poor | $137.00 | |
| International Paints | Micron CSC | 25-50% | 10-25% | Good | Good | $250.00 | |
| International Paints | Micron WA R | 25-50% | 10-25% | Very Good | Excellent | $240.00 | *$ |
| International Paints | Micron CF R | No | 10-25% | Very Good | Good | $290.00 | |
| International Paints | Micron Navigator | No | 2-10% | Good | Good | $275.00 | |
| International Paints R | Micron Aqua R | 40% | No | Very Good | Excellent | $240.00 | * |
| West Marine | PCA Gold *$ | 40% | No | Excellent | Very Good | $239.00 | |
| PS Value Guide | Hard antifouling paint | ||||||
| Manufacturer | Model | Copper | Zinc | 2-year (panel) | 30-month (panel) | Price (gallon) | |
| Total Boat | JD Select | 25% | No | Good | Fair | $134.00 | |
| Total Boat | Spartan | 38% | No | Very Good | Good | $189.00 | |
| Pettit | Trinidad 75* | 60% | No | Excellent | Very Good | $268.00 | R |
| Pettit | Trinidad Pro* | 65% | No | Excellent | Excellent | $320.00 | * |
| Pettit | Trinidad HD | 60% | No | Very Good | Very Good | $230.00 | R$ |
| ePaint | EP 2000 | No | 5% | Poor | Poor | $237.00 | |
| ePaint | E Paint ZO | No | 5% | Good | Good | $237.00 | |
| ePaint | Ecominder | No | 40% | Poor | Good | $164.00 | |
| International Paints | Ultra-Kote | 76% | No | Very Good | Excellent | $260.00 | * |
| Ratings | |||||||
| Recomended | R | ||||||
| Buget Buy | $ | ||||||
| Best Choice | * |
Great article, but I’m unable to see the column headings on the comparison chart in both Chrome and Safari browsers on a Mac. I’ll miss the paper version of PS in the near future if online tables and charts are not formatted so that we can read all elements with the same ease and clarity provided by the old paper versions of PS.
I can’t see the column headings, can’t scroll in charts and keep the headings visible (in spreadsheet terms, freeze top column of a table). The price hasn’t dropped when it went to on-line only, and it isn’t cheap. It took over a month to fix the “login from e-mail to see article” problem. I expected better.
Hey! Are you guys looking at these comments? Please fix this problem!
I’ll have to pile on here – now that you’ve gone to online only, it is imperative that you improve the formatting of the many tables, which are a critical element of most PS articles. I am able to see the headings on this table (which are on the 3rd row) but they disappear from view when you scroll down the list and are not shown at all when you go to the second page of data (that itself is a weird way to show more entries).
Note – my preferred browser is Firefox