Technical

K-Ren Protect - A cover for protecting the hulls... and the environment

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Article published on 12/07/2023

By Emmanuel van Deth

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published inn°SP20aug. / sept.

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The backstory to this young company, headed up by Lucie Doriez, dates back some time. It was her father, Bernard, a world expert in outdoor textile engineering and also a yachtsman, who developed a hull protection system to dispense with bottom paint. The principle is simple: custom-make a cover that hugs the hull in such a way as to deprive the surface of light, so that it remains clean even without antifouling. The cover is slipped beneath the hull (the after end of it is weighted with lead) and then adjusted with straps, which are then tied off on the guardwires.

The advantages are numerous: you get a hull that’s always clean and therefore performs well, bigger gaps between haulouts, you save on multiple cleanings and, above all, the hassle of applying antifouling bottom paint... not forgetting the environment, the big winner here! Antifouling paints, even those that meet the most demanding standards, are inevitably more or less harmful to marine life. The worst thing for the environment, of course, is to scrub the hulls, which leads to the suspension of multiple toxic particles in the water. Not to mention the fact that this practice is being banned in more and more ports.
The K-Ren cover protects all the multihull’s underwater components – skeg keels or daggerboards, rudders, saildrive legs, propellers, sounders and even anodes (these seem to wear out less quickly “in the dark”). The product has come a long way since its launch in 2020, with the adoption of a high- strength, easier-to-clean “ripstop” fabric for underwater use. K-Ren’s initial focus was on monohulls, both sail and power, but the covers are now also suitable for catamarans. During our test at La Grande Motte aboard an Outremer ...

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