Zebra mussles, like Barnacles attach to the boat if the bottom paint is too old or wrong kind, or for some reason ineffective. Has nothing to do with grounding & electrolis.

Roger

I'd rather just blow them off. Not sue if I have a tool that would scrape them off. Perhaps I need to put on a tank and get some mak=jor type of scrping tool and not even bother pulling it out?

I put new anti fouling pain on last time. Was told by the boat yard guy that it was interlux, but it may not have been. Are you thinking that perhaps it is time to pull the boat out and spend a week on bottom paint work? Guessing for now I need to get under there and scrape these dudes off. Got any good ideas for tools to use?

Red,

You really don't need any special tool to remove them. A good quality plastic paint scraper will do the job. Get several though as you'll invariably wear them down. Zebra mussels are like a critter I use to hunt while in the Navy (based on San Clemente Island off the coast of California) called abalone. They can hold tight to your hull but after a while, their mussels relax and you can scrape them off fairly easily. The plastic scraper will eliminate/minimize damage to your paint job.

Waiting a while till they die could take a few days and then, as you indicated that your boat's pretty infested, would mean you'd be scraping a lot decaying junk. YECH! So I'd start within an hour after she's out of the water.

Joel's right also. The mussels will be 'relaxed' and you can scrape them under water easily. If you're hesitant in making that kind of dive (I'm down at Manhattan Harbour in Dayton, Ky. and know the Ohio has its drawbacks) you could enlist the aid of a diver. He could very well do the work in about an hour. You could weigh the cost of his time vs. the cost of pullin' her and putting back in(in actual $ and lost time on the boat while out of the water).

Bill