Category: Boating Tips

 Cold weather on a boat isn’t much fun

Cold weather and rain while boating isn’t our ideal afternoon. In fact, Scott and I don’t plan on doing any kind of boating in that type of weather. What we do need to do, is keep the boat dry and warm during cold weather.  I have been talking about this for weeks now.  In our “prepping for winter” blog, we talked about the different heaters and de-humidifiers we bought for the boat. Since the weather has been so nice up until this week, we haven’t really used them.

Last Friday, October 13, 2017 it was sunny but cold and crisp. In fact, it hailed at our house as I was leaving for the marina. I wanted to check on the boat and see how the warm air circulator was working.

We are fortunate here in the PNW that our saltwater marinas rarely, if ever, have frozen over or had feet of snow.  The saltwater stays a constant 45º-55º all year round. With that said, I wanted to see what the temperature was inside the cabin of the boat on a cold day.

Last weekend we replaced the weather stripping that the previous owner had put in along the sides of the boat. This helps keep the water out, as the canvas is not a tight seal.  I will be curious after this week’s storms, how well it worked.

It made sense that the cabin was still about 52º as it was sunny outside, warming up the inside. Know that a series of storm were arriving this upcoming week (October 17 – 21st), we decided to put the Ceramic Space Heater in the bathroom on the lowest setting. This heater has a thermostat and an auto shutoff, so it should kick on when it gets really cold. I also put it on a piece of tile and the bathroom door is secured open, so it can’t close on it.

The warm air circulator is now up on the counter and we left de-humidifiers all over inside the cabin too.

What kind of weather are we talking about?

Look what’s headed our way!

Yes, call me paranoid when it comes to weather. Think about it. We have left our boat, tied to a dock, with heaters on it during three big storms. Since I’m not working right now, I have the time to go down and check on it.  Thursday, October 19th will be the second round of storms, so that will be a good day to see how it’s doing.

October 19th weather update

Well, they are referring to that stream in the image above as a 5,000 mile long river in the sky heading right for us!  Last night we had torrential rains with wind gusts of 55mph.  Luckily for me, when I arrived today at the marina, it was not raining! Miracle.

The first thing I had to deal with, was the boat lines seemed looser and the boat was about 3′ from the dock. Luckily, we no longer have a slip neighbor. So I pulled it back in and tightened it up.

What was surprising was our owl is still hanging out and keeping the herons off, even in all that wind! LOL

The cockpit was definitely wet. I should have taken more photos. The bimini just isn’t waterproof, so with 10″ of rain falling we can only expect it.

The inside of the cabin was 58º, but outside it’s actually in the 60’s. The heater I left in the bathroom has not kicked on, since it’s not cold enough. All in all, considering what a big storm it was yesterday, things looked surprisingly normal. We have two more huge storms coming today and Friday, so we’ll swing by this weekend and check on things.

For me, it’s a nice drive and diversion. Even with bad weather, who doesn’t want to be at a marina with a view of Seattle?

Have a great weekend! Ally

PS, wondering what to make for dinner this weekend? Try my smoked salmon pasta! Everyone loves it!

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Winter Preparations on our Boat Continues…….

Winter is coming and we are getting prepared! They say that this winter could be very cold and wet here in the PNW. Scott and I have been so lucky this past summer, as the weather has been absolutely perfect for our first year of boating. Figures that it could be the worst winter for boating, we’ll find out.

Two weekends ago, Scott changed the oil in both engines. Turns out when he filled them up with new oil through the dip stick hole as he didn’t see the engine oil cap and that’s why it took him about 10 minutes! LOL Lessons learned again. What we couldn’t get done that day, was change the oil filters because we needed an oil filter wrench. We bought the Craftsman 2 pc 16” Rubber Strap Wrench Set, as it’s adjustable and we can use it on other engines.

Now the hard part was actually changing the filters. The filter that is up front is actually the fuel filter and the oil filters are on the sides of the engines, clear in the back.  Scott did a great job squeezing into those tight spaces to swap them out! It was not an easy job!

Dinghy water

While Scott was working on the engines, I wanted to get rid of the water that had once again collected in the dinghy.

Last week I removed it with the bilge sponge and the water was so stagnant that my hands stunk all day. This time, I bought a Multi-Use Transfer Pump Kit to siphon the water out.

However, that is probably not the ideal situation. I think we will be moving the dinghy down to the storage racks at Elliott Bay Marina. We can store it upside down during the winter. They charge $25/month and it’s worth it. We’ve already brought the motor home to store.

The Propeller Saga continutes

We needed to take the boat out on the bay to get the new oil dispersed through the engines. On top of that, it was a gorgeous day for boating! I looked down at the props and once again they were covered in sea growth after one week of being cleaned!  After talking to the guys at the marina, it’s very common for that to happen, especially in saltwater.

I decided to clean them off with our long handled deck brush before we headed out on the water. Last weekend I told you that the port side prop was bent and that’s why we were having trouble. Here’s the photo I shared:

Well, I should have turned the blades all around, because this time I realized that ALL three blades are busted!

I texted this photo to my brother-in-law, Kurt who was the Chief Engineer for the ferries and asked him if it was ok for us to go out on the bay for a  quick trip to run the engines. He told us not to go far, which we didn’t! LOL.  In fact, now we won’t be doing any kind of winter cruising until this is fixed.

We had a great cruise in the bay with our friend Meghann and the boat did just fine.  Not that we recommend cruising around with a broken prop!

This week, the PNW is getting hammered with three major storms of wind and rain.  Being paranoid about keeping the boat dry and warm, this is another topic that I will talk about later this week. Just after I wrote this paragraph, our marina, Elliott Bay Marina sent out an email telling everyone to make sure their boats are secure and to check on them this week! Here’s the weather forecast that came out today: Gale Winds.  Last Friday I went down to check on the boat and later this week I will check on it again. Must be the “new boater” worries that are kicking in! Stay tuned.  Ally

Sea growth and how does it form so fast?

Sea growth is part of owning a boat and life in a marina. When our neighbor moved in next door, I couldn’t help to notice how much growth he had on the bottom of his boat. His boat is aluminum, so honestly I don’t know if aluminum boats have anti-fouling paint on the bottom.  Our boat, was recently painted so that was not really a concern of ours. However, it also has never sat in salt water for any extended period of time.

Back to sea growth! As Scott was working on changing the oil last weekend, I noticed that the dinghy had water in it. Great – now how to get rid of that?!

Well, my brainy idea (which worked) was to use our Bilge Sponge to remove the water. They soak up a lot of water and work great. The only issue was the water was so stagnant, that even after washing my hands five times, I still stunk! Next time I will use gloves.  Scott and I have also thought about getting a small hand pump to remove the water. We’ll let you know what works best.

Is that our propeller??

As I was leaning over the swim platform to clean out the water, I noticed our propeller! Yikes!! In fact, it freaked me out so bad, I immediately sent out a posts on Facebook, asking everyone what to do.

Here’s what the other one looked like!

Some of the comments I got on Facebook were:

• “Run around in the bay”
• “Go in reverse really fast”
• “Get a wire brush and try to clean it”
• “Haul it out and scrub it”
• “Does your boat have anti-fouling paint?”

It got pretty comical. Just so you know, anti-fouling paint has nothing to do with your propellers. My brother-in-law did think it was odd to have that much growth on them though, but then again, we hadn’t taken the boat out in over five weeks. Then I walked around the marina and looked at other boats. They were exactly the same way. Perhaps Elliott Bay Marina is really fertile? LOL. Determined to tackle it, I decided to get our regular Boat Brush with Long Handle out and see if I could reach the propellers.

Sure enough, the stuff came right off.  That’s the good news. The bad news is, I realized that our port side prop was bent. This would explain why we had troubles getting going on our way to Kingston. What we don’t know, is how it happened?  When we left for Kingston, our bow line got loose and was under the boat the entire trip (30 min). But the line was unscathed. Could it have bent the prop when it first got loose?  It’s amazing really that we didn’t experience too much trouble considering we went to Gig Harbor and also through The Locks after that.

Repair plan

Since it’s now winter and we don’t plan on traveling anywhere, there’s no rush to get it repaired. A new prop will probably run about $400, plus labor. We can call a diver to fix it or fix it when we haul out in the spring to do all of the annual maintenance work.

I’m heading to the boat today since it is cold and rainy. When we left last weekend, we only turned on the warm air circulator in the cabin. I want to see how well that kept it warm and dry. The weather is forecasted to get colder and down into the 30’s next week, so we will most likely turn on the ceramic heater this weekend. Scott has to change out the oil filters on Sunday, so we’ll give you an update! Stay tuned as always…..Scott and Ally

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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.  The catch is, the heater will be left on at all times, but on the lowest temperature. Since it’s a 750w heater, we will turn off our fridge so we don’t trip our circuit. We plan on putting it in the head on a piece of tile and keep the door propped open to the cabin. Scott and I plan on going down to the boat at least every two weeks, if not weekly to check on it.

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.

We already had one dehumidifier in the cabin, but we bought another Star brite No Damp Dehumidifier 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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