Gooseneck barnacles

This is what our freshly waxed hull looked like upon arrival in the Marquesas:

Gooseneck barnacles grew on our hull during our passage, making us steadily slower in the water as the weeks went by. We had been given the tip to trail a line from the nose of the boat on each side every few days and that reduced the number of barnacles that we had from the nose to somewhere amidships where the rope stopped making contact with our hull. We also “flossed” our hull by taking a line from both sides of the bow and see-sawing it back and forth until we reached the keel and then trying to get it between the keel and the sail drive and the sail drive and the rudder. Fairly easy to do at anchor, very difficult to do underway.

 

The good news is that they die on their own when you arrive in port. For whatever reason, they are a bluewater only phenomenon.

We cleaned the ones on the waterline as soon as we made landfall (ok, the next day) to avoid the white circles they leave when they fall off. But otherwise, we had to dive down and leverage off a few normal barnacles and we had some slime to rub off, but for the most part the hull was clean all on its own a few days after arrival. Impressively weird.

Fun fact: the word for the “normal” barnacles in French translate to “Chinese hats”.