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Hi Ron,
I went to sea at the dawn of the antifouling paint revolution! Blue Funnel/OF were actively involved in their development and a prototype was the "self polishing" paint, first trialled on the Bay boats. There were two main areas of interest. The first was hull efficiency which translates into fuel savings. The second was longer time between dry docking and more revenue. This is the reason that the last vessels in the company were green/turquoise underwater. The only "nod" to the traditional livery was the pink boot top.
Another innovation by BF/OF was the development of the onboard fuel testing kit in the early eighties. There had been some incidents with dodgy bunkers and the company wanted some way to check that what we were getting met the standard. The kit was very simple and quite complete.
Even so, there were always surprises. I recall that the worst fuel was in the USA, especially Houston. Several times, on the Barber Blue Sea round the world service, we bunkered only the minimum to get to the Middle East and then full bunkers there or a top up to get us to Singapore and full bunkers. The problem with some of the FO in the Middle East was a high wax contentent which blocked the purifiers. The only viable solution was to remove the sight glass and let the "turd" exit. This was then washed down to the slop tanks for treatment and disposal.
Rgds.
Dave
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