Prepping for Winter on our Boat, a Bayliner Ciera 3055
It’s October 3, 2017 and finally it’s actually cold this morning at 46º. When you just spent the past four months in 80º+ weather, it’s hard to thinking about prepping your boat for winter. But here in the PNW cold weather can happen fast.
Since Scott and I have not moored or owned a boat during winter before, we made sure to ask a lot of boaters what steps they recommended. My brother in-law moors his boat, as do many of our friends. We also read comments on Reddit and other blogs. First question was about heating the boat. Keeping a heater on the boat does freak me out. The key was to find one that has an auto shut off, low thermostat and can’t be tipped over. We had many recommendations, from oil based radiator styles to electric heaters.
Keeping the cabin mold free
After much research, we bought Caframo DeltaMAX Ceramic Portable Space Heater – 750w-1500W
Other tips we were given to keep mold out of the cabin was to clean everything with a vinegar / water mixture and to open up all lockers and closets.
We also took all of the lids off of the storage spaces in the hull.
Bedding
During the summer we kept all of our linens and towels in a large Ziploc Space Bag . For the winter, we brought all of them home, including the foam pads we use on our bed.
The other big tip we got was to prop up all any cushions to allow for air flow. When we propped up the v-berth, we found MORE storage and a bunch of fenders! Crazy how much storage is on this boat! We used the lid to one of the storage bins to prop up the v-berth mattress and poles to prop up the aft-berth mattress.
just to be safe. In fact, our yacht neighbors bought a bunch of them too!
The Cockpit
While the cockpit is meant to be “outdoors”, we want to keep the moisture level as minimal as possible. We always have one dehumidifier no damp dome up top, but we also bought a warm air circulator from West Marine. This is only 70 watts and gently dries out wet cabins.
Scott also removed all of the deck carpets and took them home. Normally, we keep the life preservers under the seat in the well of the floor, but we moved those down to the cabin so there is nothing on the deck of the floor now.
The canvas on our boat is almost brand new, however it still isn’t a tight seal. In fact, water does come in (especially when we wash it) on the sides of the canvas (see circle).
Because of that, the previous owner put in weather stripping on the inside to direct water to flow out. We need new stripping, which I found at our local hardware store and we’ll get that up this weekend. In the picture below, that is just remnants of the old stripping, that someone removed.
Lastly, our boat came with a dashboard cover and we used it to cover up the gauges & electronics.
Some people might think we have gone over board (no pun intended) on trying to keep the boat dry and mold free. My biggest worry of course, is leaving the heater on “automatic”. The one we bought does come equipped with overheat protection and automatic shut off to help provide peace of mind. We’ll test it out this weekend and if I’m not comfortable with it, we’ll search for another.
Scott will be doing some maintenance items on the boat this weekend, which I will include in our next blog. Many people have asked us if we still plan on using it during the winter and the answer is “yes!” While we won’t be boating in bad seas or stormy weather, we do plan on taking the boat out on crisp sunny winter days and staying on it. Stay tuned for that next adventure – Winter Boating! Cheers, Scott and Ally
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