How to Clean the Bottom of a Sailboat Underwater! (Tips from the Pros #4 /Patrick Childress #54)
Sailing 5 years ago 26,010 views
How to Clean your boat bottom (a sailboat hull), under water. These are bottom cleaning tips from a professional! Boat owners can save money by cleaning their own boat hull in the marina or at anchor, and this should be part of the sailboat maintenance routine. Whether you use a scuba tank, a Sea breathe hookah, underwater breathing apparatus, or just snorkels, fins and a mask, regular underwater bottom cleaning is something all boat owners who want to save money can do. It’s just part of maintaining a sailboat, if you are sailing around the world. Some antifouling paints are better than others at keeping the bottom clean. Coppercoat can offer a solution too, though regular bottom scrubbing, and hull cleaning is necessary even with this...there are no free rides it seems! Boat owners save money by doing regular underwater hull cleaning, but you can also pay a diver to clean the bottom of your sailboat too. But if you there are many barnacles on your boat, then it’s probably time to haul the boat, and apply new antifouling paint. Hank Schmitt, owner of Offshore Passage Opportunities, and a professional scuba diver, demonstrates how he keeps the bottom of his Swan 56, Avocation, free from barnacles and other marine growth. He demonstrates cleaning around the waterline by using a suction cup, and then how he uses a scuba tank, that he leaves on deck, to clean the sailboat prop and the sailboat keel. Patrick Childress finishes up the demonstration of how to clean a boat hull, by showing his use of the Sea breathe hookah to clean the bottom of our sailboat, another way to deal the bottom of your boat. About Hank Schmitt: Hank owns a company called Offshore Passage Opportunities, a premier crew networking site. He also runs the North American Rally to the Caribbean (NARC) 2 times a year. He has been a delivery skipper and professional diver and rigger for decades and decades. Check out his website at http:/www.sailopo.com ▬▬ FOLLOW ALONG! ▬▬ ✩Instagram: http://www.Instagram.com/svBrickHouse ✩ Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/SYBrickhouse ✩ Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/SVBrickhouse ✩Our blog: :http://www.WhereIsBrickHouse.com ✩Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/PatrickChildress ✩Tshirts and other: https://www.WhereIsBrickHouse.com/store Wish we were on Patreon? We aren’t...but you can support us in 5 other ways: 🍯(Tip Jar) http://whereisbrickhouse.com/tip-jar/ ⛵️ TWO FREE SAILING COURSES: http://whereisbrickhouse.com/sailing-school ⏩Start your Amazon shopping here: https://amzn.to/2K9MmuA ⏩ Start your West Marine Shopping here: pro-12-rvx-multifunction-display--18561654&cjsku=18561654 DISCLAIMER All the information, images, statements, and responses to comments on our both our website and our YouTube channel, are published in good faith and for general information and entertainment purposes only, and we do not make any warranties about the completeness, reliability and accuracy of this information, not for any product or technique. you may learn about here. Any action you take upon the information you find on our website or channel is strictly at your own risk, and we will not be liable for any losses and/or damages in connection with the use of anything seen or heard. Specifically, in regards to this video...Swimming can be dangerous, Boating and sailing can be dangerous, cleaning your boat in a marina where there is a stray current can be dangerous, or in the open ocean or an enclosed bay can be dangerous with both animals and pollution in the water. Swimming under your boat can present dangers. We take no responsibility for anything you do or don’t do in connection with what you have learned in this video or on this channel. From our website and this YouTube channel, you can visit other websites by following hyperlinks to such external sites. While we strive to provide only quality links to useful and ethical websites, we have no control over the content and nature of these sites. These links to other websites do not imply a recommendation for any of the content found on these site. Also, we are affiliates for Amazon, West Marine and a number of other suppliers and companies, and may make a commission on any qualified purchases. ✩Tshirts and other: https://www.WhereIsBrickHouse.com/store #sailingAfrica #PatrickChildressSailing #TravelsAnimals
Pro application... Barnacle growth after 6 months... Never able to wipe fouling off.. Always a metal scraper job. Sailboat with not a lot of motoring
Seems an expensive waste of money so far... I also have a tank with a long hose I had made up at a tank testing business. I tried another brand of silicone which looked very like Propspeed with the same dissaponting results : (
The last time I was at Porkys it was at the Small Craft Harbour. I was stunned to hear that they have moved to the Country Club. I know that in Zululand, if you do not book, generally you can get a table - especially on a Saturday this close to Christmas - but Murphy's Law states that if you don't book, the restaurant WILL be full! Again I apologise that I asked you to call, but I have bitter experience that the restaurant WILL claim not to understand me - that is the prime reason when I was discharged from hospital in Johannesburg, that I left the hyper busy environment of Sandton, and came back to the coast where people take time to understand me. It was only recently that I discovered that the air pollution in the Bay affects my diaphragm. Luckily the Country Club is well away from the factory pollution.
I have an automatic Land Rover which suits me. When driving I do not need to change gears as the car does if for me. I am perfectly willing to collect you on the way as the Club is only a minor detour along the route.
A question? Have you seen hippo in the water at the club? I know that they often are seen on the John Ross crossing the road - sea on one side and not far from Lake Msingazi on the other side - great views from the Country Club?
Maybe we can meet at the club at 11 (ish) and I can drive you to the country club. I have been there before often. My daughter started her schooling nearby. To get there, you follow the John Ross Highway away from Alusaf and Mondi and turn at the relatively new Pick and Pay. On the shores of the lake, is the country club.
By the way, this is a club where you dare not stray off the course into the rough, or the water hazards. If your ball goes in, just take a shot penalty and get a new ball because the chances are extremely high that a crocodile lives there!
In Zululand we suffer from Zululand Fever where exact time is irrelevant. It is common for a 9am meeting to start at 11:30, and no one cares. That may be the reason that cancer kills more people than does heart disease.
I can call and make a reservation. Want to say 1pm? Noon? -Rebecca
I have texted my friend who will know if Porkys still exists and am awaiting a response. She is my psychologist, whose ex husband owns the entire waterfront.
I belong to a religion where spending on a Sunday is highly discouraged. I am more open to lunch as I live in Mtunzini some 15 kilometres South as the crow flies. When walking my dog in the park opposite my flat, I can often see a line of tankers waiting to get into the harbour at the Bay.
I have a friend who has offices very close to Porkys so she will know if it still operates. If It has closed down, maybe I can collect you from the Club and drive downtown to a restaurant? I still have your cell number in an undeleted message, so could call. If you want to SMS, my cell number is 084 556 7497. I am aware that there are other restaurants at the Small Craft Harbour, but in my opinion, Porkys is (or was) the best.
Because of the factories in the Bay pouring out their pollution, I seldom come to the Bay. I literally cannot breathe after half an hour. Rain helps to wash the air clean.
How much longer will you be in the Bay? Then maybe we can meet up at Porkys Restaurant - at the Small Craft Harbour - some time next week. I find that being so close to the sea air that is not yet polluted, I can at least breathe.
Thursday is a questionable day for me also. At 59, I have been on Pension since I was 32, after my being run over, my employers put me on ill health pension. Thursday is our local grocery stores Discount Pensioners Day. Saving for a project boat, every little bit helps.
In the last 35 years that I have been in Zululand, December is really hot, not just warm! Christmas Day is best spent in a swimming costume next to the pool - most people here at the coast have at least a pool, if not an efficient airconditionair. I really would not like to drive a car that does not have an aircon, and as a rule, I never turn mine off - ie the aircon is on every time the engine is on. As a general rule, I am about as mechanically minded as my wallet with gold credit cards. It seldom rains like today, but that is for me a good thing today as the air is not contaminated with pollution from Alusaf (aluminium smelter), Mondi (paper mill) and Indian Ocean Fertilizers. It is one or all 3 of these that affects my brain - hence breathing - and after a while, I cannot talk (even badly) and battle to maintain my balance - something to do with how your motor reflexes are controlled by your brain. My linkages between the brain and my muscles was damaged when a truck ran me down. Drives me insane that I cannot talk easily, walk properly or even breathe or swallow properly - not like I used to.
Enjoy your time in Zululand. If you get a chance to, there is a brilliant restaurant at the Small Craft Harbour - Porky's. It can be reached by dinghy from the yacht club and honestly, in the last 3 decades at least, I have yet to have a substandard meal there. The food is always well prepared and presented - and not expensive!
10. comment for How to Clean the Bottom of a Sailboat Underwater! (Tips from the Pros #4 /Patrick Childress #54)
One more rule to reduce the enjoyment of your boat.
A marine electrical technician or a marine surveyor can give you specific readings or teach you how to determine if there is a dangerous condition nearby.
The best way I can think of to be aware of the many dangers involved would be to take an ABC (Power Squadron) or CG Auxillary Marine Electrical course.
Another one of my opinions is that there will Always be stray current present in a saltwater marina, usually not lethal. Around here, when the electric dredge is working, zincs also seem to disappear faster.
I cannot recall hearing about anyone being electrocuted in our saltwater marina in the last 50 years. However, I have lost count of the number of boaters who fell in and drowned because they were apparently unable to get out.
20. comment for How to Clean the Bottom of a Sailboat Underwater! (Tips from the Pros #4 /Patrick Childress #54)
- used a single suction cup. They make them with a handle. Cheaper and easier to maneuver.
- buy buffer pads to use as scrubbers. You can cut them to size and save a lot of money.
- I used a glazier scraper. The half-round cutout was great for quickly scraping shafts. The pointy part was great for outboards, changing zincs and cleaning other places that were hard to get.
- hookah is great. But if you can get a pattern down, you can do almost the whole boat by holding your breath. Probably not the smartest, but I did it to save money as I hookahed off bottles.
Wow, you two are YouTube experts! Love what you’re doing!
I also checked out the tip jar and was expecting to see a link where I could enter my card details and be done with it. Didn't see anything like that. Do you have PayPal?
Thank you for your support!
Here is our direct link to PayPal: https://www.paypal.me/WhereIsBrickHouse
Would be really great to see a vid on how to service your kiwi prop. I’ve only seen one video on YT and it was poorly done. I just picked up a second hand 3 blade kiwi prop with spare blades for $20 and am thinking of replacing my 2 blade folding Martec with it.
30. comment for How to Clean the Bottom of a Sailboat Underwater! (Tips from the Pros #4 /Patrick Childress #54)
It seems that using a tank and long hose is very similar to the hookah ....... except with less/simpler gear.
Do you need scuba certification to do this? What are the general pros and cons.
When I learned to dive, we were told that if you wanted your cylinder filled, you needed to show that you were certified. But the only thing that I've ever seen anyone concerned with is whether the (metal) tank had been inspected within the last year and hydroed within the last 5. There is no way to predict what any particular dive shop is going to ask for in other parts of the world, and I doubt that anyone could convince them to bend their own rules. I wouldn't have a clue regarding how to fill a bottle with a DIN valve. We didn't use H valves. Nobody that I knew liked J valves. I had an octopus regulator for awhile but preferred my stock conshelf. If you had Scubapro, you were bitchin, if you had USD you were a loser. I had the latter but I didn't give a shit what anyone thought.
To me, depending on someone to fill my tank is a vote for a compressor. A compressor like Brick House has. Not a $69 Harbor Freight shop compressor, but then again their Chinese "honda" (Chondas) engines are remarkably popular on commercial urchin boats around here. Those fishermen (and women) build their own compressors which typically give them about 135psi. Those will not fill a scuba bottle, nor do they care to.
We interrupt this program for a special bulletin (in the form of a fulminant rant):
Just as an aside, I've noticed that not everyone realizes that scuba tanks are not "oxygen" tanks. In fact, the deeper you dive, the less oxygen you are going to want in your tank. This matters because a long hose from a compressor is supplying the mix that they are breathing on the surface. Another vote for professional instruction is that the first time you get Lit AF breathing nitrogen at 50 or 60' you are doing it in the presence of someone who is not clueless. I have been on numerous diving charters locally, where you can go as deep as you please (they frown on exceeding 90'), far far from any sort of medical help. More Often Than Not, there is going to be a popper or two, that is, somebody who ran out of air and had to rely on their bc to get them back to the surface. (Where's your buddy? Dunno, guess we got separated 20 minutes ago). By the time they reach the surface, they are most often unconscious. So the divemaster has to get the hell over there and start resuscitation. These are people who Have had formal instruction. These are people who have proven they can take all their stuff off and put it back on, including their air supply, while at depth. Please forgive me if I am a fan of formal instruction, but some of these people didn't actually make it home. NO, you don't need to be certified to scuba dive and you don't need to be certified to use a hookah. But what you don't know can kill you. If you are going to surface when the air runs out please ensure that you are not all the way at the bottom of the pool that you are trying it in.
It's called Blow-and-Go. With scuba or hookah, holding your breath, ascending too fast, or failing to decompress are just a few of the ways you can get hurt or killed. If you B&G, you have to relinquish your weight belt if you want to live.
My own cylinder was a 60 cubic foot steel bottle. That's pretty flintstone these days, aluminum and carbon fibre bottles are now additional choices. We could buy aluminum bottles in the 1970's, but they seemed kind of profligate. Those were 80 cu ft if I remember correctly (my memory is mushy), not only could you stay underwater longer with an 80, but you could actually do a decompression dive with them which was not easy to do with a 60, beyond perhaps a recovery which just took a few minutes. They (single steel tanks) just didn't hold enough air to be able to ascend slowly enough. The aluminum bottles made then are no longer refillable, btw. Really, I'm probably stating their capacity incorrectly, but the aluminum ones definitely held more air.
If you use a bottle, that means that you are storing a Bomb aboard. The newer ones will take up to 3500psi and that's pretty scary. Even if you're careful, a full bottle can be hazardous to have around. I feel that steel is the safest, since they're harder to damage. It's not something that I have ever seen any dive boats store belowdecks. Stored in an engine room, they could easily get too hot. I was taught to only store them vertically. Hank, laying his bottle horizontally while using it, is not doing anything wrong. I have seen one burst disc let go (more pressure than the tank could stand); it was a bottle that had just been filled in a dive shop, it was loud and unnerving. Aluminum bottles can get dented more easily, that's going to be terminal. Anyone who paints their own aluminum tank has also screwed the pooch, nobody I know would fill that. Filling any scuba tank with any compressor other than a compressor designed for that purpose is like lighting the fuse of a bomb; not that anyone has a 3500psi compressor lying around, but the air must be free of any moisture, oil and anything else. I know of one local sail boat that can fill their own bottles (Thunderella). I would be ok with filling one scuba bottle with another scuba bottle (would of course be less than halfway), but it's pretty hairball. I wouldn't want to be within 5 miles of an exploding carbon fibre tank. Just dropping it could be enough. Dive shops fill bottles while they're immersed. That's not convenient for a small boat to do.
Because it's a Bomb, that's 2 votes for a compressor.
Boats that I've travelled on, that had a scuba bottle aboard, the bottle was reserved more important things than recreational diving. All of the peripheral crap that goes with scuba diving makes free diving more attractive than it seemed at first. Personally, I cannot imagine diving without a snorkel whether I'm using a scuba tank or not. Urchin divers and other commercial divers have no use for a snorkel bc they don't spend much time on the surface, or if they do, they don't care how much air they use. I noticed Hank doesn't use one, I am sure he knows what's best for Hank.
Refilling a scuba bottle is as big of a hassle as hauling fuel or water from town. You might not be allowed to bring a scuba bottle aboard a bus.
That's 3 votes for a hookah.
The best reason I can think of to use a scuba tank is that you are going to be checking your anchor a lot more often than you are going to be cleaning the bottom of the boat, at least beyond goose barnacles or whatever. If your very expensive and favorite anchor just will not come up, you are going to want to find out why. I would never take a recreational compressor and simply lengthen the hose to go deeper. Not only is it unlikely that a hookah compressor will have the poop necessary to supply air any deeper than its stock hose length, there is virtually no reserve without a volume tank in the line. You will probably not be able to hear the compressor crap out if you are underwater anyway, so it will not be obvious that you are breathing off the volume tank (or the extra hose length) even if you do have one. From personal experience, it's nice to have a hookah for getting that line out of the prop. I was secretly relieved to see that Rebecca and Patrick Do Not have spurs on their shaft. I Hate Spurs. When I was a kid I always used a hacksaw to get a line out of the prop. Then I realized that the simplest of scratches on a shaft from a hacksaw blade is a death sentence for that (SS) shaft.
I have absolutely no problem with a long hose between the first stage and the second stage of a scuba tank regulator. If you run out of air with scuba, you are going to have between two and eight breaths between the time it gets hard to draw and the moment there's nothing left. More experienced divers use air a lot slower, but more experienced divers know better than to let it run out in the first place. Plan your dive and know before you get in when you are going to surface.
End of rant LOL
What I was questioning is the risk and regulations of using compressed / regulated air. It is my understanding (right or wrong) that a scuba cert is not required for a hookah. It would seem that a surface tank and 25’ hose might be treated the same way.
As for safety comparisons.....the finite air supply from the tank is a weakness. However with either tool, surfacing if and when the air cuts out seems like a pretty safe and easy option..
if it is legal and as safe as it appears, the tank seems like it would be a fairly cost effect solution.
I don't remember ever seeing a recreational hookah unit with a hose longer than 25'. That will keep you in the one ATA zone. Using a longer hose will negate that built-in safety factor, and your compressor may not be powerful enough to overcome the extra resistance.
Some hookah units have little or no "reserve" (low pressure volume tank) so if they cut out it will help to be shallow water.
Diving is pretty big around here (central California) bc of the sea urchin fishery; their hookahs have hoses which are much longer. Two fatal accidents which come to mind were one diver whose compressor air intake was drawing carbon monoxide from the hookah's gas engine exhaust, and another very experienced diver, working alone, whose hose was unwittingly snagged by a passing sailboat under power. Only later did they realize what happened.
While I was certified to dive (NASDS) in 1973, I switched over to mostly much simpler free diving after that and have obviously forgotten a few things.
Assisted diving, even within one atmosphere, can be dangerous and seeking professional instruuction is a good way to learn as much as possible about the hazards.
Diving 7 feet before flying has the same effect as diving deeper. I don't think that statement is fearmongering, it is an indication that I am concerned about people getting hurt by less obvious dangers.
It is in fact a reaction to what a very close, and experienced, friend did: dove to 3 atm, spent severral hours cleaning and repairing their mooring, then got on a flight home.
Remember your bottom time is based on the max depth, even if you were only at 1atm long enough to pick up a dropped putty knife.
Thank you Sean
The yellow button on his regulator (mouthpiece) is the second stage of the regulator that reduces the pressure from as much as 2000psi in the bottle to around 140psi feeding the mouthpiece. (A hookah won't be that much). You need that part of the regulator down there with you because it needs to know what the water pressure is where you're at, not what the pressure is at the surface. If you still decide that you don't need any instruction, for the love of Mike don't ever hold your breath or ascend faster than your bubbles.
Good idea for a future video...keep them coming!
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