Never Wet On Props - Wow!

Boot Key Harbor, Marathon, Florida

Here in the Florida Keys, we must have a diver clean the bottom once every 30 days.  Especially the props.  Barnacles love the bare metal on props.

18 months ago (the last time we were on the hard) I sprayed my clean prop with Never Wet.  I didn't have much hope for it.  I thought it would wear off quickly.  It didn't.

Now after 18 months, the diver told me he never saw such a clean propeller before. Not a single barnacle or bit of slime. He wanted to know what I did to it.

I bought Rustoleum Never Wet at Home Depot for only $16.  It is the two-part version of Never Wet. They call it a "super hydrophobic"coating.  It is very much unlike anything I've seen in the past.

Next time we are on the hard (next summer), I'm going to use it on a test patch on my hull.  If it works well, it is very much cheaper than toxic bottom paints.  I'll post here two years from now about how it worked out.

A friend is also testing Never Wet inside his boat.  He had been using ever more toxic chemicals to try and prevent growth of mildew, and none of them worked.   We reason that Never Wet not only repels water, it should repel moisture and thus prevent mildew or mold from growing.  I'll report back on that experiment in a year.

My friend Jay suggested that I run a test.  Take surfaces partially coated and partially uncoated and photograph them after some weeks.  I did that.  

Above: I had a test made of PVC pipe, stainless, and an aluminum beer can.  The masking tape shows places protected from the Never Wet Spray.  On the left is the rig after one week's immersion.

Above after 6 weeks: The aluminum part broke off.  The test rig picked up more than 5 pounds of growth!!!  It appeared that the never wet portion was covered as well.

Above: I rubbed it with bare hands.  Almost all the growth wiped off the Never Wet portions easily, none came off the uncoated parts.  Caution: Do not scrape it with a tool.  That will scrape off the Never Wet coating.   Most important, there were zero barnacles on the Never Wet coated portions.

I don't like doing product endorsements on this blog, but this is an exception.  For a $18 investment, the results are spectacular.  Nothing I've heard of before seems to work as well on props.

p.s. The diver who remarked about my prop, did scrape it anyhow.  Immediately after scraping, growth and barnacles began to grow.  That proves that something was really happening.  It also shows that the Never Wet coating is fragile and easily destroyed, so NO SCRAPING.