A EUR 6m repaint was ruined by crew cleaning it with vinegar

The most expensive surface on the boat

Marcus Reynolds, Boero's senior brand and project manager, told Marine Industry News that an owner spent EUR 6 million having his yacht repainted, and that the finish was then damaged when crew used vinegar to lift streaks off it. He offered it as the argument for why a coatings supplier now has to train the people who live with the paint, not just deliver it to the yard.

The number is the point. A full repaint at that size sits alongside a new tender, a rebuilt interior or a season of charter revenue, and unlike those it is the one item every prospective buyer inspects from the dock before he reads a single survey line. An owner who signs for the paint and then leaves the aftercare to whoever is holding the hose is exposed on both counts.

Boero wants in before the hull exists

The company set up its Lifecycle programme in 2022 and now works with designers and naval architects before construction starts. Boero describes Lifecycle as customised painting solutions backed by a dedicated team for superyacht yards, captains and management, and it runs the BYC Academy, which puts applicators and crew through classroom and practical training. It also monitors coating performance on vessels in service.

For an owner this matters because the coating supplier is normally the yard's choice, buried in a build specification he never reads. It is one of the few decisions taken before steel is cut that stays with the boat for its whole life, through every warranty argument and every yard period. Getting a say in it early is cheaper than arguing about a blistered topside in year four.

Colour is not only a taste decision

Reynolds told Marine Industry News that changing the colour of a boat can change 30 per cent of its heat transfer. Boero says its antifouling systems hold for up to 36 months, and it keeps testing sites in Italy, Singapore, Dubai and northern Europe so a hull can be checked in the water it actually sits in. The colour work goes a long way: the company matched a Bentley blue for a 52-metre.

So the dark hull an owner falls in love with in a rendering arrives with an air conditioning bill attached, and the antifouling interval decides how often his boat is out of the water and off charter. Both are decided at the paint stage, years before anyone feels them, which is exactly why the paint conversation has moved forward in the build.