[Rhodes22-list] winterizing- help please

[Bill Effros]

It's OK Phyllis, you're in the club--no further need for disclaimers about the dog eating your homework.

Next lesson about how to use the advice you can get from this list--always know the source.  

Winterizing advice from people living in Winnipeg is going to be different from winterizing advice from people living in Key West.  Winterizing advice is going to be different from people who actually do it themselves, as opposed to people who just read about it, and then pay others to do it for them.

I live near you, and I do it myself.  Here's what I do:

1.  Steer Boat Onto Trailer.
2.  Hose slime off bottom of boat, and salt off trailer.
3.  Run Fresh water through engine for 5 minutes.  (I use earmuffs)
4.  Store boat on the trailer--bow very high. 

That's it.

I don't take my batteries out of my car in the winter, nor does anyone else where we live.  I don't know why we should take them out of our boats.  I have solar panels on my boat which constantly top off the batteries.  If you don't have them, get them.  It's much simpler than taking the batteries out of the boat every winter "just to be on the safe side."  

We've had some pretty cold winters and my batteries lasted for 6 years.  They still had some life in them, but it seemed dumb to push my luck for another season.  I like the old fashioned wet cells.  They are cheap, and they take a higher charge so there is less of an overcharging issue.  

One winter, owing to a mental lapse, one of the batteries was frozen inside a cake of ice for 6 weeks.  It still worked, though, and after the ice thawed I just left it where it was--apparently no worse for the wear.

I don't put tarps on the boat.  I figure it is in the elements all summer, what's the difference in the winter?  I try to put a coat of wax over everything before the winter.  Collinite is good for a 1 coat wax job.  I have done damage to previous boats with tarps and would never use one unless I could see my boat 24 hours a day.  Also, I always work on my boat in the winter, outdoors, and you can't do that when the tarp is over everything.

Here we go on motor reliability again, but.  Rummy, and Ed, and I, and others with Tohatsus will all tell you that we never have problems starting our boats in the spring.  We never report "stale gas" or "carbonized valves" or "crystallized oil" or any of the other "dog ate my homework" problems reported by people who invariably turn out to have new 4-stroke engines.

I gather you have a new 4-stroke, so I can't tell you what to do from my own experience.  I will tell you that if your engine is truly as reliable as mine, spraying snake oil and indulging other superstitious rituals is unnecessary.

I leave food on board, and eat it when I go to work on the boat during the winter.

Freezing water in the bilge is not a problem.  (The cake of ice mentioned above encompassed the entire foredeck, cabin and cockpit to a depth of 1 foot each.--No harm done to anything.  All the water entered the boat after it was on land.)

I haven't changed the gear oil in my lower motor unit, ever.  I try to change spark plugs once every 10 years, but usually miss by a year or two.  Doesn't seem to make any difference.

I leave all the seats and cushions on board all winter.  I've never had a mildew problem.  I had more problems storing boat stuff in my basement than I did on my boat.  Again, what's the difference between winter and summer as far as your boat is concerned?

I try to do some fall cleaning on the boat.  Here the rule of thumb is to remove anything except safety equipment that I never used during the season.  These items never return to the boat.  I'm still getting rid of stuff I put on board 10 years ago that I've never ever used.  

(One of the problems with the Rhodes is that it has so much storage room there is a temptation to use it all.  The boat is much easier to use if it isn't also functioning as a floating junkyard.)

Well, that should keep politics off the list for a while.  Everyone does not agree with me regarding the above.  But that's what I do, and it has worked just fine for me.

Bill Effros









  


"Conservatives are so afraid of losing their majority
status right now that.they're showing an astonishing
willingness to spend now and dump all the cost in our
children's laps, and an amazing unwillingness to
reconcile the size of government with the amount of
taxes needed to fund it."

Brian M. Riedl
Heritage Foundation
November 24, 2003

Source:
www.QuoteWithoutComment.com

 
 

----- Original Message ----- 
From: P&M Beals 
To: rhodes22-list at rhodes22.org 
Sent: Thursday, November 04, 2004 10:27 PM
Subject: [Rhodes22-list] winterizing- help please


Dear Rhodies,

I checked out winterizing at the rhodes22.org site, which is our only
reference site besides GB's site, correct?

and I reviewed all the saved messages from a couple weeks back.

Here are my questions:  Remember I am not a motor acquainted sailor  until
two months ago...

We have a Yamaha 9.9 electric start motor ( since we don't need to mix oil
with the gas I believe it is a 4 stroke).  What if anything do we do for
that type for winterizing?

Is it necessary to top off gas tanks to prevent condensation?

We will remove the batteries.

Do folks remove the spreaders from the mast when putting their boat down for
the winter?
When I first stepped the mast with Joe Ware in August the spreaders were not
on the mast, but when we prepped it for travel north Joe said leaving the
spreaders in place would be ok.
Will there be a problem of them bending or too much stress etc if left in
place? I do recall we had one  heck of a time getting them in place.

we will be covering the boat with a cover, quite securely but it will
definitely be an outside storage.  also besides washing down the hull can we
wait til late winter to bottom paint again or is that necessary now?

Any extra drainage steps to take....we didn't use the water holding tank at
all.

Looks like this Sat. we have to pull  her out.  Would like to have had more
sails but that's about it for up here.  When I was a kid to teen, and sailed
on the Hudson up north we had a family tradition of sailing on Thanksgiving,
with a small pot belly coal burning stove in the cabin...with a smoke stack
vent of course. We had to chip away a thin ice sheet some times from around
the bow. good memories though.

Thanks 
Phyllis
Whisper
NJ   
__________________________________________________
Use Rhodes22-list at rhodes22.org, Help? www.rhodes22.org/list