Catching the paint

At this time of year, hundreds of boats will be lifted out around our coastline to be packed away snugly for winter 🥶

When the boats are lifted out, they will be washed down. Now the problem is what comes off the boats when they're washed. Most boats will be painted with antifoul, some of which are biocides and toxic to animals, and technically us as well.

The toxic particles get eaten by worms and shellfish at the bottom of the food chain which accumulates as the worms are eaten by birds etc. The toxins remain present in the environment for a long time as well 🕰️

(Google TBT and Whelks - TBT is now banned but is still present in the environment - particularly mud)

Although no one means any harm, boat clubs don't really have a management option to stop this - nor has any pressure been put on clubs to regulate it. Commercial premises such as marinas are required to, but recreational/private clubs have avoided this.

As the paint particles are hazardous they need disposed off properly which costs money. The other problem is the disposal is by weight (normally) or per container. So all the water you have washed the boats with is technically contaminated. Water is heavy and the cost will be high 💰

So how do you only collect the nasty stuff and release filtered water?

In comes the contraption I have built here (picture below). I have tested it with some muddy water to see what particles are collected. And it seems to have worked!

I also got to test it later with actual antifoul paint, look at the white specs below.

Some small particles did manage to get through though - but the bigger particles were caught - work in progress!

I do plan to upgrade the mesh to a smaller size of 25 micron (very fine mesh).

It could be a waste of time but I'm optimistic that this will significantly improve the current situation. It costs less that £50 to build. Some of the fancy equipment for commercial marinas and ports are well above £2000!

 (believe me - I wrote a grant application for the stuff which failed - hence the current situation 😂)

I just need to add some chicken wire to protect the mesh as it's very delicate - just like me 🫠

Now an ideal solution is to use a ecofriendly antifoul paint, and it would remove the need for this. Realistically we are not there yet and should use this method as a mitigation until those paints establish themselves in the boating world.

Now by doing something about this runoff, it is challenging the norm and won't be to everyone's liking.

But most people are in favour of simple, cost effective methods like this 👍🏼