How To Fair Your Boat Bottom For More Speed and Higher Performance



Posted: Tuesday, May 05, 2009

by Harvey Chichester
Durall Industrial Flooring

Water turbulence eats up energy and can slow your boat down. It has been known for a long time that a 2-inch scratch on a smooth surface can generate turbulence for 10 or 12 inches as water flows over the scratch. If you have an older boat, your bottom probably no longer perfectly smooth.

Fairing your boat bottom is not that difficult and can be done in a few hours with simple hand tools and under $200 in materials for most boats. First the bottom has to be clean. Use a pressure washer and brush as needed. If your bottom is soft enough to put your finger nail into the bottom coating you should use a spiral tip for your pressure washer to peal off that soft coating, and then use a palm sander with 100 grit purple 3M-type paper.

Next, get out the glazing compound. You can find it at www.boat-bottom-paint.com for $3.98 a tub. You will need two or three tubs for an older boat. Use the plastic putty knife that comes with the glazing compound right out of the tub with no mixing and fill in all your nicks on the bottom. Your glazing compound does not need to be perfectly flat because it sands easily to flush up with the existing boat bottom. Allow the glaze to harden for about 2 hours and sand off with your palm sander. Then repeat until the bottom is smooth.

After that, you want to seal the boat bottom. Now you can get great non-stick coatings like those used on cookware. Cookware coatings use the largest molecule known, a molecule that has a lower drag coefficient than ice. This type of coating was first developed by DuPont and marketed under the name Teflon. Now Smooth Sailing Boat Bottom Paint has made available a clear brush-on coating using the same molecule. There are three choices. A long-life Urethane Teflon that last up to 10 years. A great Copper Teflon that resists most waterborne organism growth. And a Clear Teflon that does not yellow and can be used like wax but is thick enough to use several layers to fill in imperfections in your boat's surface. Clear Teflon boat bottom paint can be used like a permanent wax.

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