Bird Poop on Bimini Top and Cleaning

Bird Poop!

When you keep your boat in a marina, you are going to have to deal with lots of bird poop! The bimini top on our boat is black canvas and it’s nearly impossible to clean the back end of it during regular washes. This is because we can’t reach it from the front and it’s too tall to reach it from the swim platform.

Scott and I knew we need to address this, as our neighbor’s boat in the marina was covered in heron poop!

The dirty job

We figured we could remove the top and lay it on a tarp on the dock to scrub it clean. In fact, we had purchased outdoor fabric guard by 303 Products, but it has to be absolutely clean and dry before you apply it. Scott thought we just needed to remove one of the rods and slide it out and we would unzip the rest.

The highlighted area shows where the rod is attached to the inside of the bimini

Now what?!

The bimini had to be cleaned and so we decided to unzip the back of it, so the dirty part would hang down into the boat. Can you say “YUCK!”?

This is not “art”, but heron poop all over our canvas! So I moved the tarp into the boat and put a large beach towel on the floor right below where we would be scrubbing to catch any water. (I did take a photo of all of this, but I guess it didn’t take). Scott used a bucket of clean water,Mer-Maids Canvas and Vinyl Cleaner and a scrub brush to clean it. We rinsed it with a bilge sponge with clean water. It wasn’t perfect, but it was certainly better than it was!

Once we were done, I wanted to figure out a way to deter the herons. All of our marina neighbors are laughing at us, as they say there is nothing we can do. They say we just have to clean it regularly. Not giving up, we decided to put up an Inflatable Owl and Bird Repellent Scare Tape. Let’s see if it works!