Interesting Joe.    If the whole hull was truly hydrophobic, it would change the drag coefficient, which would attract interest from racers, which would finance more R&D ...

I've also read that the Feds have the goal of outlawing all toxic bottom paints.  But they can't really do that until there is a fully viable alternative.  Again, there could be handsome payoffs for successful R&D in this field.

Hi Thimas,  

I tried it.  Didn't work for me.  But other friends swear that they tried it with success.  Go figure.

I have a discouraging follow-up report on the Never Wet.

This fall, before splashing Tarwathie, I cleaned the prop and put on two new coats of Never Wet.  I was looking forward to providing a report next spring.  

If you recall, my last test was spoiled when the bottom diver scraped my prop even though it was clean.  He scraped the Never Wet off.

Now for the discouraging part.  Under sail on the way south, we encountered a dense field of lobster traps on a moonless, starless night in Florida Bay.   Four times I hooked a trap in the gap between hull and rudder.  (Yes I do have a metal tab going across that gap to prevent fouling that way but for some reason it didn't work.)  Four times, I freed the lines by backing up up 100 m or so. I was not about to go diving down there at night.  

On the fourth time, the Styrofoam ball hit the spinning prop.  Styrofoam flew in all directions.  Unfortunately, so did my Never Wet.  Only a week later, new barnacles were growing on the prop.

So, I stand by what I said before about Never Wet.  it is extremely effective as a propeller anti-foul.  But it is also very fragile and easily rubbed off.

I just dove down on TAMZIN to check the zinc and clean the prop, there were eleven barnacles, I counted them just eleven.  Normally after about six months or so the prop would be so fouled that I couldn't back out of the slip.  It has now been 28 months since TAMZIN was in the yard and when I polished and then sprayed the prop with Never Wet.  The stuff works great.