Boat Care

Hull care, speed, and what really matters

There are a lot of sailors floating around obsessing about exactly how to squeeze another .05% increase in speed out of their boat hull, and arguing about sanding, waxing, and even texturing the bottom of their boats. Curiously, these are usually the sailors who miss every wind shift.

The fastest, easiest, simplest answer; keep your boat clean. Dirt and crud, especially oily crud, will make you slower, keep your hull clean and you'll be fine. Now start worrying about how to find those elusive wind shifts.

Of course, if you want to finish a place or two in a regatta better than 'fine' and already think you have the wind shifts nailed, then its time to think about your bottom. Other than just leaving it alone, here are the choices:

Wet sand; use sandpaper intended to be used wet (!!), its the black stuff at your local hardware store. If your hull is beat up a bit, start with #320 or 400 grit, use a soft sanding block that bends a bit, and lots of water. HINT; use a wood block with a thin sponge under it as your sanding block. Finish with #600. (If you have heard stories about people with too much money paying others to regularly polish their boat hulls with up to #4000 grit, those stories are true. Just another wonderful example of how its possible to spend way too much in this sport.) Don't obsess about the direction of the sanding, just sand in a nice circular motion. When you are done, rinse it off, and walk away. This produces a 'hydrophillic' surface, one that likes water, if you spash on a bit it should flow out into a thin film. Technically, this is a superior surface (do you really have time to read about 'tubulent laminar flow'?), but it has one big drawback; its a raw gelcoat surface that will easily pick up polutants and other crud, especially oily stuff. If you are sailing in dirty water (like the 2010 version of the Gulf of Mexico) your boat will be fast off the trailer, but not much farther than that.

Polish; this gives you a nice shiney surface with the added benefit that the boat slips off the trailer or dolly much more easily. (If your hull is dinged up, start by sanding as described above.) This gives you a 'hydrophobic' surface, if you splash water on it, it should immediately bead up into little droplets. Technically, this is not as fast as sanding BUT a waxed hull will stay cleaner longer. And it will be much easier to wash off the road grime, or dust blowing around the boat park. So while the local expert will argue that the wet sanding produces a faster hull, the answer is that a clean hull is faster than a dirty one - and a waxed hull stays cleaner longer.

The next step up from just plain old car wax that you bought cheap, is a real marine wax (it finishes thinner than a car wax) - and the next step above that is a wax with PTFE (just like the 'turbulent laminar flow' from above, you don't have the time to really understand why polytetroflouroethylene works, but you can impress your friends by telling them that really fast snow skis use flourinated waxes in wet snow conditions).

The most recent addition to hull finishing tricks have come directly from skiing, some of them marketed by companies that are better known for their ski waxes. These finishes are very long lasting, keep your hull even cleaner than the PTFE waxes, and have the added benefit of actually making your hull faster through the water either by turning the hull into a 'hydrophillic' surface that is even slipperier through the water than sanding OR by putting on an even more 'hydrophobic' surface than a standard PTFE wax. One huge hint (from all of Jim's years in skiing) is that these finishes work better if put on over a well-waxed hull that just a wet-sanded one.

STARBRITE Marine Polish with PTFE

This is the stuff Jim uses. It won't make a clean boat faster in clean water, but it will help keep a boat cleaner in dirty water - which can include not only oil or gas, but organic goop and floating 'stuff' that you don't want sticking to your hull. It also makes a boat easier to clean after a road trip. If you are going to use one of the high-tech finishes like Hullkote below, use this stuff first. $29.95

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Hullkote

The ultimate in speed and clean, very long lasting (two coats will give more than 30 days of in-the-water performance), easy to apply (just wipe on/wipe off, no waiting for it to dry, no hard buffing), in an enviromentally friendly citrus base. This is the fastest, easiest to use, most affordable solution to hull speed.
$36.00

 

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McLube

This stuff first appeared years ago as SailKote, a product that would help stretch the life of a sail. Now we use it everywhere; coat sails with it to improve performance, reduce water absorbtion, make tube-launched spinnakers slide in/out easily, on traveler tracks and cars to make them slide easier, on luff groves to help sails go up/down, even as a speed coat on hulls to help keep them cleaner in dirty water. Catamaran sailors with spinnakers should go through a couple cans a year or they destroying their spinnakers..... $19.95

This stuff has to ship as "hazardous" and its hard to disguise the rattle of the mixing ball in the can! Since that virtually doubles the price, we prefer to not ship it - please visit the nearest West Marine, they normally stock it - and we always have cans in the back of our van at events. If you really can't get it any other way, contact us with your shipping details and we will send some your way.

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All prices FOB Granby Colorado.
Prices subject to change without notice.

If you would like more information on these products, send us an info request.