Dragon Boat West

Can anyone advise why anti-fouling paint is not applied to bottom of the dragon-boats to prevent barnacle growth?  Is it...
-incompatability with gel-coat?
-no reason, just tradition?
-even the relatively environmentally friendly anti-fouling paint is too harmful to the environment?
-the mixture of anti-fouling paint and False creek waters would create a stew so potent that new life forms would result?

This is a persistent question from the sailors on our non-Vancouver team who are cranky about haul-outs and scraping .
Any advice here is welcome.

Just prior to taking our boat out of the water (the first time) we were posting progressively slower race times during practice. (gasp! 3+ minutes) Of course when we yanked her out we found barnicles and seaweed (about 2 feet long) hanging on the bottom. We scraped her, put the anti-foul on the bottom and posted a practice race time of 2:05 (crazy!). Of course the boat being clean was the contributor not the paint, although this paint we used resulted in an incredibly smooth finish.

We now do this at least once a year and we never have seaweed. We do still get barnicles, but not nearly so many, and they are easy to scrape off. A power washer gets rid of most of it.

I would strongly recommend using this stuff, but it is darned expensive! (75$-100$/quart) if you are frugal with it you could do the bottom (empty boat below waterline) in 2 quarts.

Cheers!

     I have friends that are sailors and they put diaper cream on their boat to prevent buildup. (I'm not joking!!! ) Apparently if you buy the stuff with 30% zinc (not positive on the percentage) it works really well at keeping the nasties off the bottom of the boat. Much cheaper than antifouling paint!!

"Smooth as a baby's bottom" is taking on a new meaning.