Winter Prep

[Byekurman]

I know we've got some time before cold weather but I want to stay ahead of the curve. I keep my Mainship 390 in Virginia waters. We do have occasional snow and cold snaps of freezing temps for 10 - 15 days at a time. The dock master indicates that I should not need to worry about ice issues on the hull. I will be visiting my boat at least every week or two. I can run the 6LYA-STP and Kohler 8KVA when I check on the boat. This will be my first winter with this boat. What things would you recommend to be done for winterization? Any water of fuel additives? Thanks for any suggestions you may have.

 

[Nomad Willy]

“Ahead of the curve”
Indeed
We don’t start thinking that until late Nov or early Dec in a mild winter.

 

[rgano]

Holy crow, it will be 95 degrees here today, but OK, here's my thoughts. Be aware of the things that are close to the skin of the ship like potable water lines Mainship and others love to staple to the hull and cabin sides. If you have plastic water lines, not too much to worry over, but I still drain the lines, leave the faucets open, and open the vanity and cabinet doors to prevent cold spots behind them. Even down here, when a freeze is predicted and since my boat hangs in a lift, I run an oil-filled heater in the cabin at night on a timer and a magnetic block heater on the Yanmar 6LPA. I have some waterline heater tapes I have on a timer around the water tank too. All in all, your winters are not vastly different there than ours (lived there a lot of years myself), and doing the pink antifreeze and engine layup drill is unnecessary. With your boat in the water, you probably don't need to take the precautions I do, but getting the fairly cheap gear I use ahead of time will do you nicely.

 

[DavidM]

In Virginia with the boat in the water, you can just use a small heater or two to keep stuff from freezing, maybe one in the engine compartment and another in the main cabin.

That is what I did in Oriental, North Carolina and it worked fine. You do have to be aware of power outages and take action if one occurs for long. That action would be doing all of the things Rich talks about above. My boat was behind my house so I could quickly deal with any problems, and would have run a power cord back to my house to provide power from the generator in an extended outage which also would have kept the boat from freezing.

But if you don't live close by and can't easily take care of a power outage, maybe the best thing to do is winterize it, just in case.

David

 

[Slowmo]

It sounds like your boat is in the water. In our area it can freeze as well though the water doesn't freeze. We empty the water tanks so that air pumped through the water lines. I put a little antifreeze in each head and pump it through. We suck antifreeze into the raw water system so it can't freeze. Close ALL the through hulls (if it's stored in the water). You don't want to risk a hose failure when you're not there. Just put a sign on the mains/gen start that the through hulls are closed so you don't start them dry. In reality if it's in the water there's much less chance of anything at/below the waterline freezing since the water isn't below freezing. However if it is on the hard you have to pay close attention.

We also leave fuel tanks full to minimize water condensation in the tanks. Finally we use the small 'dehumidifiers' in the cabin. These are really just low wattage heaters that have small fans in them to keep the air in motion. We've never had a freezing issue.