Diving and Hull Cleaning

The hull will needed to be cleaned at least every 3 months in colder climates, and much more in tropics. How frequently depends on when the last haul out was, and how new the paint is/ what type of bottom paint was used. If you’re going to pay someone, it will cost about $200 per time depending on your boat size in California. At that price, the break even point of paying a diver vs doing it yourself can come quickly. However, the task can be pretty time consuming, and financial savings might not be the best reason to invest in a diving system.

Instead, diving brings peace of mind that the anchor is set, the bottom paint and anodes look good, allows the water intake vent to be cleared, and many other tasks. We originally purchased our hookah when needing to change the prop without a haul out, and not being able to find a diver up to the task. Having a way to dive on the boat thats easy to setup and tear down has been one of the best upgrades we’ve made.

Note: As a side note, we don’t recommend trying to clean without diving. Some hull shapes allow for using a large broom and going around with a dinghy, but we never had good luck with that. Other people will “beach” their boats, but we’ve seen that go very wrong and multiple boats wrecked. Only do that if you have experience and a good place to do it.

Why Electric Hookah

Of course, use what you know best if you already have experience diving or enjoy it as a hobby. If not, we recommend going with a electric hookah system over air tanks. This is what many “commercial” hull cleaners use, and it takes up significantly less space inside the boat and you don’t need to worry about filling the tanks. An initial concern before purchase was energy usage, but we’ve used maybe 0.2 kwh on the most demanding of cleanings. Another concern as people that aren’t divers, was the safety of being under water and breathing correctly. Since we’ve only used it for hull cleaning, we’ve never dove below 6 feet. We try to let air out while ascending as a best diving practice, but at hull cleaning depths, diving is perfectly safe for a beginner.

Which Electric Hookah System

A hookah is just a standard air compressor, hose, and a regulator. Because of this there are many options and variations. You can go with portable electric options like BLU3 or the Third Lung, but they are quite expensive for a proprietary piece of equipment that will be difficult to repair. They are also another battery to manage, and the primary benefit of being able to dive untethered to the boat is over stated to us. It’s a little nerve wracking to have your unit floating in salt water, and the 60’ foot hose we use is plenty for most boats.

Another option is a full DIY system like this. We really don’t recommend that however. It’s your life and health, and the stress of having to get everything right was not worth it to us. Instead we opted for a hybrid DIY system. We looked at the listing by Air Line by J Sink for their electric hookah, and sourced the Thomas Compressor ourselves. We then bought a kit from “Air Line by J Sink” that included the hoses, regulator (the “add a diver” package), and bought a heat transfer hose. By the time you buy the compressor the costs end up being about the same, so it might make sense to just buy the full kit they have put together for you.

The advantage to this over proprietary systems, is that everything can be repaired and replaced separately. The hoses and regulators can obviously be ordered again and have so far performed flawlessly. The electric compressor shouldn’t need maintenance, but after developing significant rust inside the unit, we took it apart to investigate further. We were concerned about rust getting into the breathing air, but after looking inside and referencing the schematic at the bottom of this manual, it seems the breathing section is protected from rust. It’s continued to work fine and we’ve decided to stop worrying about it.

The hardest thing about building this system is sourcing the compressor. Any Thomas compressor with specs similar to the one used by “Air Line by J Sink” should be fine, but we choose to just buy the same one. The model number is “BA3624-4209-7” and the specs are:

For more details, a user on cruiser forums “fstbttms” writes more about this through many threads and is a commercial hull cleaner.

Hull Cleaning

For gear, every environment is a little different, but in Northern California a hooded 5/4 wetsuit is recommended. The reason for hooded, is because the creatures on the hull bite and stick to everything, and the hood provides good protection. For this reason we also recommend gloves (cheap from the hardware store are fine) and booties. Outside of that, a large plastic scrapper, a good mask, and a weight belt and weights are a requirement.

To actually clean we have to deal with large tides. If going any time beside 30 minutes before and 30 minutes after high tide, the tidal current will be too strong and visibility will be low. In a pinch we can clean at low tide, but visibility is horrible so it’s by feel. Cleaning can be done without a partner feeding the hose, but we’ve installed an Air Hose Reel that makes spooling the hose out and rolling it back in much easier and neater. This reel and the compressor are both bolted in a cubby under the cockpit deck.