Simple Boat Care Tips for Year Round

As the summer months are winding down this year, it's time to start thinking about prepping your boat for the winter months or at least prep it until then. Some people are crazy enough to just leave the boat out with a cover on all winter, which isn't smart because it will ruin your boat. Getting your boat properly set for harsh winter months is essential to having it last for years and years.

If you live in Florida or Texas or some of the other deep south states, this isn't as important but still a good idea because even Texas can get frost and cold weather at random times in the winter months. Here are some other tips you should use if you don't plan on using the boat for a while and what you should do for the winter months.

If it's still summertime out and your just putting your boat up for a while, then you need to make sure of a few things. It's always important to keep it covered up to avoid any water getting in and ruining your interior. Most boats will come with a normal cover for the interior and then a giant cover that will cover pretty much the whole boat from top to bottom. The nice thing about the giant cover is that it will protect the boat from intense sun that can fade away the paint color on your boat.

Most the time these giant covers will cover these spots but I've found that tying some tarps the length of the boat will give it extra protection against the sun. It's a lot of work to but worth it because if you let the sun get to the paint, then that's just more time of polishing and buffering to help bring back the color of the boat and to protect it again.

Other small things like ensuring you have no electronics in your boat and making sure your batteries are shut off are also pretty important. Having electronics in your boat like a GPS when its extremely hot out can cause damage to them and sometimes can even start fires.

Although fires are pretty seldom in this case but it's still a possibility. This is the same reason you should have your batteries shut off as well. I've seen before where boats put in the summer months had caught on fire due to electrical issues in the battery compartment and burned up the interior of the boat. It's simple thing to shut your batteries off and most the time it's done by just turning a knob in your battery compartment.

When it comes time to winterizing your boat, the best thing to do unless your very experienced in this matter is to just let a marina or boat dealership to do it for you. While winterizing your boat isn't a completely impossible task but some would feel better to have experienced individuals do it.

Mostly this just involves emptying out the fuel lines, draining cooling passages and so on. There's a lot of components involved but with a little research from yourself, then you can simply do it yourself and save some money but personally I don't have a problem with letting my local boat repair shop do it for me.