Winter Boat Maintenance Part 2

General boat care is fairly straightforward. On both boats, I make sure that there is no standing water in the bilge area. I simply open the drain plugs, and leave them out for the winter. This ensures that if there were to be any water build up over the winter, it would drain out, without worry of freezing and damaging lines or bilge pumps.

Another simple measure that I take is to make sure that all of my batteries are fully charged, and if possible, the main power shut off is turned off.

Another thing that I do with the boat itself is to clean it out if I know that it won’t be in use any time too soon. For most of us that store boats in unheated garages or storage facilities for the winter, this could be a very important step. This helps so that there won’t be anything left inside the boat to potentially mold or mildew, and as far as my tackle goes, there won’t be any rusting of hooks with the freezing and thawing cycles of winter.

Last but not least, I always like to put my boat away only after I’ve thoroughly cleaned, vacuumed, washed and polished the boat. It’s much nicer to hop into a boat in the spring that’s been put away cleaned than one that’s full of last year’s grit and grime.

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