mbY star rating
★★★★★ As good as it gets
★★★★ Better than the norm
★★★ Average
★★ Could be improved
★Didn’t work for us
quiet to be heard in the saloon or cabins but in the
ultrasound exPlained
lazarette you can just hear the telltale quick ticking
noise that the unit emits, much like a depth-sounder. A transducer attached to the hull sends out
regular pulses of ultrasonic sound waves into
THe reSulT the surrounding water. these are inaudible to the
the boat went back in the water at the beginning of human ear and harmless to fish but disrupt the
June 2009 and was not lifted until the southampton microscopic cell walls of the single-cell organisms,
Boat show in mid-september. even though the boat Kits with two or more transducers which are the building blocks of all marine fouling.
normally has constant year-round use, we usually
are available for larger boats.
the manufacturers claim that the sound waves
have to take Motala over to Cowes for a mid-season do not vibrate the hull and will not damage GRP,
lift out and scrub on the excellent sealift floating dock gelcoat, sterngear or painted surfaces. the Ultra
(www.sealift2.com) to counteract the drop in 10 dual-voltage system is priced at £1,052
performance caused by aggressive summer fouling. including VAt. Installation starts at around
this season we had a fairly quiet start to the season £250. see www.ultrasonic-anti-fouling.com
and the boat did not move for nearly a month, giving for more details.
barnacles the perfect opportunity to get a grip on the
hull and sterngear. From late June the boat was out
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working on a regular basis. despite this, the typical The ultra 10 device was fitted in June when
drop in performance did not happen. In a four-month
most of the antifouling was a year old.
period over the summer, we lost about half a knot. KiXej[lZ\i
:fekifc
this is far less than normal and no more than we’d
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expect from engines that were in need of a service.
When we did lift the boat in september, the results
vindicated our initial impressions. Around the
waterline, where we had done a boot-top antifoul,
there was the normal Hamble ‘brown’ but almost no
slime. Further down the hull the one-year-old
The transducer is
antifouling was remarkably clean, with no weed and attached to the inside I\jfeXk`e^jfle[nXm\j[\k\iXc^X\Z\ccj
just a couple of small areas of slime at the aft end.
of Motala’s hull.
strangely there were a few (ten at most) barnacles
on the hull directly above the props, which we
After four months in the water the control patch
by the lifting strap shows some slime growth
have not had before.
but the hull and shafts are remarkably clean.
Best of all was the sterngear itself, which was
fouling free, with minimal weed growth on the props
or shafts and no barnacles even up at the top end of
the shafts where they exit the hull. the tabs had a
certain amount of slime and weed on both surfaces,
but this was half the amount of growth we normally
get. the control panel had a similar level of slime
and 11 barnacles on it.
verdicT
Overall we are very pleased with how the unit has
worked. the fit-and-forget nature is simplicity itself
and the trial shows that the Ultra 10 has definitely
slowed the growth of weed, slime and barnacles,
particularly on the sterngear. We now intend to
antifoul the boat but only every other year, although
The propellers, rudders and P-brackets
remained barnacle-free. only the trim tabs
we will still need to lift it annually to replace the fast-
show any significant growth of slime.
disolving anodes. But the biggest win for us has been
its ability to maintain our boat’s full performance and
fuel consumption over a full season.
the cost savings from this and the normal half-
yearly lift for a mid-season scrub would, over a period
of years, offset the initial cost of the unit, particularly
on a larger, faster boat with heavier fuel consumption.
Whether it would work on every boat in every location
is another matter but for us it’s a thumbs up so far.
Keep a look out for ongoing reports in the Our
Boats section of the magazine. Jon Mendez
mbY rating ★★★★★
Value ★★★★I
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