At the risk of being exposed as a total ignoramus.......

[Telo]

... I have to ask if anyone knows anything about coral.

The barnacles last season looked a bit bigger and more plentiful than normal. Anyway, when I was scraping them off the hull and rudder the other day I noticed a few small patch of what I took to be coral forming on the hull. Now, I only call it coral because that's what I was told it was was by my mum and dad about sixty years ago - that kind of bone like growth that you can see on rocks and shells.

Anyway, I noticed this growing on a small motor boat;



What is it - coral or what? Have to say that although I don't regard myself as being especially unobservant, I don't think I can recall seeing any on the hull before.

[claymore]

I think you must have moored in a paddy field.....

[Telo]

Nah, I put it down to Global Warming.

[marisca]

I'm sorry to tell you it's nothing exotic, just tube worms. Like barnacles, tube worms seem to be able to recognise where others of their species are clinging and form colonies. Fastidious removal can keep them at bay or if you can persuade the critters to lodge on your mate's boat ..........

[Silkie]

I had a little of this last year and likewise think it was a first for me too. I don't know what it is either but seem to remember being told it was some kind of marine worm.

[aquaplane]

The calcerous deposits dissolve in acid but are a pig to get off with a scraper.

Galvanised trailers dissolve in acid too so it's not the best way to clean up a boat on a trailer.

Carousel picked up a good growth the year she spent @ Tayvallich.

[sahona]

Looks like the stuff we called coral worm in Alicante. It was everywhere, up the shaft log and everything... Allegedly more profuse in "the old ports" which to me inferred they might thrive on sewage.
Don't tell me Nick was right and Scotland's west coast is now the same temperature as the Med. - or could it be...

[Nick]

Don't tell me Nick was right