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Photo courtesy of Steven Arst
The 147-foot yacht M/V Bayou, an occasional island visitor, in the Nantucket Boat Basin Saturday. On its top deck is an Amphicar, an amphibious motor vehicle manufactured in Germany in the early to mid-1960s. |
By Tobey Leske
I&M Contributing Writer
High tide today will occur at 03:21 (4.0 feet) and 15:59 (3.6 feet), with low tide occurring at 09:18 (-0.3 feet) and 21:38 (-0.1 feet). Light your steaming lamps tonight at 20:12 and extinguish them tomorrow at 05:21.
For the third year in a row now, I have forgone the onerous chore of bottom-painting, as the past two years have shown that very little growth occurs even without a fresh coat of this terrible toxic goop.
The results were mixed. My Rhodes 19 did really well, acquiring virtually no scum on the bottom. She was only in for about six weeks, but considering the lack of growth, it looks like I’ll forgo painting her bottom again next year. My Glacier Bay also did pretty well. She was moored out by Monomoy and sustained only some moderate growth of scum around the waterline. The rest of the hull was still quite clean.
The bottom line is that even without repainting for two years in a row, the growth was not that significant, and in my mind, not worth applying gallons of highly-toxic bottom paint that pollutes the harbor and is so harmful to the organisms which live in it. That being said, I will probably apply about a six-inch stripe around the water line of the Glacier Bay’s hulls to keep the scum level down. As for the sailboat, she won’t be receiving any again next spring and hopefully will spend more time in the water next year. I’m still not convinced that painting of the entire bottom every year is necessary.
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