Nyalic Coatings for Yacht Maintainence
This page is agout a space-age, clear, surface protector that is about as easy to apply as washing your yacht. It will add years of life to your paint or gell coat and is the only realistic way to maintain a high gloss mast. First, a little review of polyurethane paint performance in the tropical south Pacific. When we bought the Moira in 1976 she looked fabulous - her gel coat and the brand new LaFiel mast gleamed in the tropic sun. But after 8 years of continual cruising in the South Pacific her gelcoat was looking powdery - even cracking in places - despite our attempts to preserve it with various waxes and coatings. We tried compounding it and polishing it and waxing it but in the end, the low quality gel coat used in Taiwan began to disintegrate. So, in 1984, we sanded the gell coat and in some places took it all off - and then built a new coating following the exact recommendations of International Paints with an etch primer, two coats of epoxy high-build undercoat and three coats of linear polyurethane. Painted the whole boat, including the mast which was beginning to powder. International paints said we'd get 10 years out of the paint. They were wrong. By 1990 the paint was buggered - from dull and powdered to actually cracking. We repainted the entire boat again. This time we used 20 litres of Proline 4501linear polyurethane. In 1994 we repainted the mast and this time tried Altex devoe Awlcraft No.4, undercoated with their recommended epoxy hi-build. Two coats of undercoat (one gallon for all) and 4 coats top coat (6 liters). We did get 10 years of use with Proline paint. But 10 years goes pretty quickly out here in the South Pacific and by 2002 the paint on the hull was dull with very small cracks. We decided to repaint the hull and topsides while the old paint was still firmly attached. So - haul the boat, wash it, fine sand it everywhere, clean again, dust wipe, mask it and hire a painter to spray the whole boat, stem to stern, topsides and hull, with Jotun linear polyurethane (we couldn't get Proline in Australia). Big job. It took us 10 days of yard time in the painting shed and cost a fortune even though we did a lot of the work ourselves. Introducing NyalicJust as we were finishing repainting Moira in 2003 I noticed a guy standing in the shed door watching us clean up. "Too bad I didn't stop by last week," he said, "I could have saved you a heap of time and money." "How's that?" I asked, walking over to him. "I have a product that would have made your old paint job look like new again." He smiled and offered his hand, "Jeff Melville." "So what's the product?" I asked. "Nyalic. It was developed by NASA to coat the shuttle and is used in the aircraft industry to cut down on repainting costs. In fact, that's why I'm here in Bundaberg. Delivering some to the air base. Here, I have a sample kit in the car," and he walked off to his car and returned with a box. The sample kit had a small can labled Nyalic, some plastic containers with cleaners and prep materials, a little sponge roller and some written material. It all looked pretty professional and I'm always interested in new high tech solutions to yachting problems. So even though I really didn't think it would have saved us a repaint I kept an open mind. Jeff explained that the coating could be applied with a sponge roller, paintbrush, even a rag. It was non-flammable and dried to a high gloss UV resistant finish. He also said two or three litres would cover my whole boat, inluding the mast. If, after a few years, it needed repainting you just had to wash it with a special soap and sponge, wipe or spray on a new coating. It would melt the old coating and blend in perfectly with no streaking, runs or visible edges. "Try it somewhere on the boat," he said, "and see how it works out." After he left, Freddy and I put some on the binacle - it went on like water and was easy to apply and made the old dusty paint shine like brand new - just as Jeff said. Find out more about Nyalic's history and what it is and how much it costs at their webiste www.nyalic.com - there are dealers in Australia, New Zealand, and the US. Repainting the Mast - again - almost a disasterIn 2005 we pulled the mast again to repaint it. The paint was lifting in many areas from corrosion where stainless fittings annoyed the aluminum mast. We normally pull the mast every 5 or 6 years anyway to change the standing rigging and check all the bolts, wires, etc. I've never liked the idea of losing a mast at sea.
Here's what we had to do just to repaint the 20m tall mast: 1. Hire a crane to remove the mast. Oh how easy it is to write that! We used Jotun epoxy and linear polyurethane. The undercoat was so rough we had to hand sand off 2/3 of the paint that was sprayed on. As the painter sprayed the final topcoat on the mast a bulldozer began work upwind of the yard. About the same time the wind started to blow 20 to 30 knots. Even though the mast was in a protective shed the final topcoat was buggered from the dust. So we fine sanded the mast again and the Painter agreed to return the next day to respray the topcoat. But the wind had also lifted some of the overspray right out of the painting shed and some of it got onto a car parked downwind. The guy raised hell and went to the EPA. So the next morning the yard manager came over to the painting shed and said the painter was not coming because they could no longer spray paint in the sheds until they were totally secure from overspray. So there we were with a sanded 20 meter long mast that looked awful, wondering if we could manage to brush on a topcoat and make it look halfway decent. And then I remembered Nyalic. Nyalic to the Rescue
I found Jeff Melville's phone number on the Nyalic papers from the sample kit he had given me in 2003 and gave him a call. I explained my problem and then, as we were talking, I decided to get enough to cover the 2 year old paint job on the hull. He sent me 3 litres of Nyalic plus the cleaner and prep chemicals and tossed in some little sponge rollers. It took Freddy and me about 20 minutes to roller the mast with Nyalic. One coat used maybe 600 ml. The Nyalic hardened within minutes and gleamed like a perfectly sprayed on topcoat of fresh polyurethane. There were no runs, no roller marks, no wrinkles. It was really and truly fantastic. Freddy took the photo of me with the Nyalic can so I could send it to Jeff along with a testamonial about what a great product it was.
It took us 2 hours and when we were done we had almost, but not quite, used two liters for the hull and the mast. Fantastic. Beautiful. Of course we had no way of knowing how long Nyalic was going to last in the harsh tropic salt water environment that we inhabited. 4 years later, in 2009, the mast is still in perfect shape, nice and glossy, just like it looked in 2005 when we put on the Nyalic. The hull - well, that's a different story. We discovered that Nyalic and vinyl bumpers don't get along. Wherever we put a bumper the nyalic stuck to it and it made a mess. The solution was to use a cloth covering on the bumper - which we now do all the time. But even so, when we spend several months in a marina with the bumpers down and the wind blowing hard the bumpers will dirty-up the hull. We are seldom in a marina anyway, and fixing the problem only requires getting in the dinghy and giving it a bit of a scrub and recoating with Nyalic. Amazing stuff. You scrub the old Nyalic and then roller on a new coat and it blends right in leaving a perfectly glossy surface with no edges to show where the Nyalic had been worn off. You can't do that with paint. Where we get hull scratches from dinghy oar locks and such I have to sand, fair with putty, sand, paint, sand, paint, and then topcoat with Nyalic. If you need to repaint around a scratch you don't have to remove the Nyalic from surrounding areas because it acts just like a primer coat and paint adheres to it perfectly. Here's a photo or the section of Moira's hull where a bumper had made a mess. We just cleaned it an recovered it with Nyalic (don't forget you are looking at the hull of a 30 year old boat in the photo below).
That was in 2007, when we slipped to do the bottom. We also rollered on another coat of Nyalic onto the whole hull while we were at it. This was the first recoat after 2 years. Worked like a charm. In 2009 the topside deck and cabin paint job from 2003 was looking dull (that 6 year polyurethane curse). Don't listen to the paint adertising guys about getting 10 years from linear polyurethane. You won't. It starts to go in 6 years and it does not matter what brand it is or how you put it on. If you looked at a microscopic cross section of a coat of linear polyurethane you'd see why it's called that. It looks like a honeycomb with vertical cells and a top layer that closes off the cells and gives the paint it's brilliant shine. After 6 years that top layer gets destroyed by UV from the sun. The paint, without that top layer, looks dull. Now that the "cells" are exposed the paint begins to break down more quickly. So, with chalky topsides, we went into Port Moselle Marina for a couple of days to coat the cabin and parts of the deck with Nyalic. We had not done it before because we were worried that it might not stand up well on surfaces that we touched or walked on all the time. But with the paint going we either had to repaint everything again or put on the Nyalic. Day 1 at the Marina. Wash and prep. Day 2 - paint (45 minutes). End of job. The cabin paint looks terrific again. Looks brand new. I'm sure we will have to recoat the cabin top and parts of the cabin sides more often than we do the hull because of the traffic and use this area is exposed to. I'm thinking of redoing the mast one of these days but at the moment it does not look like it needs it. But hey, it's easy, it's quick, and it costs one hell of a lot less and is a lot less work than repainting. I give Nyalic a 4.9 out of 5 star rating - the only drawback is you have to cover your bumpers and avoid putting it on surfaces that you will be touching or walking barefoot on a lot. So hurry on over to www.nyalic.com and check it out.
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Freddy and I then - the same day - painted the entire hull with those rediculous little sponge rollers that Jeff sent. 
