Leaving A Boat in A Wet Slip Year Round - Arizona Edition
If you’re thinking about keeping your boat in the water this winter, here’s a brief guide on the steps you need to take to prepare it for colder temperatures, so you can start it up easily once the weather gets warmer. After Labor Day, it’s official. The end of the boating season! As overnight temperatures start to drop, many boaters pull their vessels from the marina so it can be safely stored during the off-season. But, in Arizona, can you just keep your boat in the water all year long so it’s ready for the first signs of spring?
Why Is Winterizing Your Boat Important?
If you think living in Arizona means you don’t have to worry about freezing temperatures, think again. While it may not get to freezing temperatures often, Arizona has an average winter temperature of 32F, and winterizing your boat is a necessity. If your boat isn’t prepared, you can have cracks in the engine and steel components and gum in the fuel system. These damages can end up with a costly repair bill or even irreparable damage to your boat or the engine.
The primary culprit of boat damage during the winter is moisture. When water freezes, it expands, sometimes with tremendous force. Water in the cooling line for your engine can easily split the hose when it freezes. Freezing water can even crack an engine block, which is an incredibly costly fix.
Winter air is also incredibly harsh on your boat. Dry winter air can leech water from the interior of your boat, causing decking to become brittle, and vinyl or leather seating to crack. Meanwhile, high humidity during the winter can cause carpeting to get waterlogged, resulting in a musty, moldy problem when you reopen your boat in the spring.
The old cliche “an ounce of prevention is worth more than a pound of cure” is never more true than in the boating world. You can prevent all of these headaches by going through a comprehensive and thorough winterization process.
How To Winterize Your Boat for Wet Storage
Winterizing is an essential part of yearly maintenance on any vessel, but it’s especially important for those who are looking to keep their boat in the water during the off-season. Since winterization prioritizes evacuating water from the marine systems in the boat, you need to make sure that it’s thoroughly protected from the environment while in the slip.
Make Sure Your Marina is Equipped for Winter Residents
If you’re thinking about wet storage for your boat in Northern Arizona, or a cold climate where ice forms in the water, make sure the marina you choose is equipped to keep your boat safe. This means much more than simply asking if they have an available slip. Since water moves less frequently in a marina, it’s more prone to freezing than an ocean or river. If ice freezes and brushes against your boat, it can scratch, crack, or even puncture your hull. Marinas that allow for over-winter storage must have a way to prevent ice from forming, by using agitators to keep the water moving. You can even invest in your own de-icer that you can keep at the end of your slip for extra protection.
Inspect Your Boat and Hull
Next, you need to prepare your boat for colder weather. The first step is to give your boat a thorough inspection. You want to check the hull for any cracks or lines that water can collect in, which could cause a problem. Take this opportunity to also inspect the bottom paint on your boat.
If you keep your boat in a slip all season long, you should already have your boat bottom painted to prevent barnacles, algae, and other marine life from growing on your hull. Most boats need to be repainted once a year, so consider repainting your boat before winter to give it the maximum amount of protection.
You can also apply a barrier coat to the bottom of your boat for an extra layer of protection. Barrier coat serves as a sealing layer to prevent water from getting beneath the paint, causing damage to metal or fiberglass hulls. Barrier coat is normally good for the life of the boat, unless there is a defect that breaches the barrier. You’ll find evidence of this as bubbling in the paint, or weeping rust spots that show evidence of corrosion. If you need to reapply this barrier coat, you’ll need to sand off both the bottom paint and existing barrier coat down to the bare fiberglass or metal, and start fresh.
Close All Thru-Hulls
After painting, you can put the boat back in the water and continue with the winterization process. Start by closing all thru-hulls below the waterline. These are small openings and valves along the hull of the boat that allow water to move in and out of the boat. These are most commonly seen in the aft of the vessel and are often used for cooling the engine or supplying a saltwater sink or faucet. Closing these access points makes it easier to effectively purge water from the boat.
Treat your Fuel Tank
Regular gasoline can go bad in just over a month if it’s not treated properly. That could spell a disaster for your engine when you start your boat up again in the spring. To ensure you have a full tank of gas the next season, you’re going to want to do a few things to prep your fuel tank.
First, fill your tank as high as you can. The reason you want as much gas as possible in your tank is because you want as little air as possible in the fuel system. Air has moisture in it, which can freeze and precipitate down into the fuel in your tank. When that water mixes with your fuel, it can reach your engine and cause trouble.
Fuel stabilizer is necessary for boats that run on regular gasoline as it’s volatile. When gas is left to sit in an engine, the ethanol in the mix evaporates, introducing water to the system and causing the gas to go bad. Bad gas is less likely to ignite in the engine when you turn over your boat. Even worse, because the volatile components from the fuel have evaporated off, it can leave sticky residue in the system, which may force you to replace your fuel system earlier. After pouring stabilizer into your gas tank, run your engine (with access to water, so the engine can cool) for a few minutes to make sure the stabilized gas has circulated through the system completely.
Drain Water From the Boat
Next, you want to drain all the water from the boat. As mentioned above, water expands when it freezes, which can cause lines to burst or corrosion. Removing water from your boat is challenging, because there are countless places where it can hide, like coolant lines, fresh water tanks, drains and more. Most boats have channeling along the length of the boat to help water run from the bow to the stern, which helps provide a guide for removing water. Start at the front and check to make sure all drains and channels are clear until you get to the aft of the boat, where there’s likely the most water, as that's where the engine hatch and bilge are on most boats.
Drain the bilge and engine compartment of all water. You may need to use a rag to wipe up some moisture off the floor and walls of these compartments. Running the engine for a few seconds can also help purge water from the system (don’t run it for more than 10 seconds or so without water, as you can overheat the system.) Seal these areas by spraying a silicone lubricant like CRC 5-65. This spray helps keep water from getting on top of your engine or other mechanical parts, which helps them stay in good condition and resist corrosion. Finally, add antifreeze to the bilge and water tanks to remove any risk of freezing if those systems activate while the boat is in storage.
Fully Charge the Battery
Make sure your marine battery is fully charged before storing it for the winter. If a boat battery goes too long without a charge, it can actually damage the components of the batter, meaning that it won’t hold a charge in the future. Some people prevent complete discharge of the battery by using a battery tender, a device that sits in the battery hatch and controls how fast the battery loses charge.
Cold temperatures can damage a battery, causing them to lose the ability to charge or maintain a charge. However, if you’re storing your boat in a marina, you can’t remove the battery from the boat, as you need the bilge pump to operate if any water makes its way inside the hull. The best way to prevent power loss due to cold temperatures is to try and insulate your battery compartment as well as you can from the cold. Even some aluminum foil inside the hatch can help reflect warmth from the battery, keeping this space toasty for your electrical components.
Tilt Outboards And Propellers Out of The Water
Before you leave your boat, make sure you trim drive units as far out of the water that you can. This includes your outboard motors and your propellers. While most people will leave these components in the water during the season, prolonged inactivity on these components can cause lasting damage. For example, if water around the plastic or metal housing of the outboard freezes, it can cause the small, fragile components to break. Salt water can also cause galvanic corrosion or electrolysis, which are different types of damage caused when an electrical current goes through water. These processes can cause buildup or weakness in the metals, leading to lasting damage. Finally, marine life like barnacles, algae and seaweed can build up on the propellers and intakes, causing snags, blockages and other headaches that will make opening the boat in the spring a nightmare. Luckily, it’s fairly easy to trim up your engines and propellers, keeping them safe from these negative outcomes.
Completely Covering the Boat
The final step in winterizing your boat is protecting it from the elements. Most people who put their boat away from the season will shrink wrap their vessel to prevent moisture from getting inside. However, because you’re storing your boat in the water at your marina, you should, instead, use an all-weather cover for your boat.
All-weather covers are designed to keep water outside of the boat, while allowing air to circulate, keeping internal aspects of the boat clean and dry. Most covers will also have vents that allow air to escape the vessel so that it doesn’t build up and compromise the cover. The best part about using an all-season cover is that you can routinely access the boat so you can inspect it for damages throughout the season.
You want to make sure the inside of the boat, beneath the cover, doesn’t get too humid. Using a dehumidifier is a great way to keep moisture out of the air. Most boat owners will place several dehumidifying tools throughout the boat, including hanging bags in closets and upright storage closets, and small bucket places like the galley, engine bay and battery compartment.
Regularly Inspect Your Boat
The last step in the winterization process is one you’ll do all through the offseason, and that’s to regularly check on and inspect your boat. You don’t want to leave it in the water without regularly visiting and checking to make sure that everything is secure and safe. Checking on your boat once a week or once every few weeks can help you intervene if there’s an issue, like if a branch falls through your cover or if your de-icer fails. This is an essential part of your routine that you shouldn’t skip on, so make it a habit.
Can You Choose Not To Winterize Your Boat?
If you live in a milder climate, you might think that you can go without winterizing your boat during the offseason. This is an incredibly risky decision, because most regions in the US will experience freezing temperatures at some point during the year. Even one night of below-freezing temperatures is enough to cause water crystals to form in your fuel tank, leading to corrosion and damage in your fuel system. Even worse, if you have a few nights of below-freezing temperatures, you could get substantial ice buildup, which can cause cracks in your hull or even destroy your engine.
If you want to be able to use your boat during the cooler months, you can still enjoy your vessel. Adding routines like purging water from the system and thoroughly drying your vessel can keep your boat in good shape all year long. Similarly, having a good, strong, all-weather cover can prevent damage to the boat if bad weather rolls in during the winter months. When winter weather boating, you’re going to want to essentially winterize your boat every time you leave it after a day of fishing, because you don’t know what conditions your boat will face before you come back.
Now that you know all the steps you have to take before winterizing your boat for an off-season in a marina, you can make sure that your boat is safe and ready for when the weather warms up again. Keeping your boat in your slip during the winter is a great way to beat the crowds in the spring, because you don’t have to get in line and wait for the marina staff to take your boat out of dry storage before you set sail.