GET YOUR BOAT SET FOR THE SEASON
Fred Dyson – Dyson's Starboard View – Messing About in Boats
The snow is gone or going. The geese have returned or are returning. The ice is disappearing. Snowmobiles are being stored, and the thoughts of young and old are properly turning to boats.
Time to get ready to launch.
Boating is a logical activity that slavishly follows the immutable laws of science. Unfortunately, people are often random, fallible, and illogical. With this firmly in mind, I will bore faithful readers by reiterating the obvious things to check before putting the boat in the water this spring.
ENGINES
Check for freeze damage. Most modern outboards are designed to automatically drain their water pumps. When your outboard first starts, make sure the pump starts water to circulating again. Generally this will be indicated by a steady stream of cooling water discharging from the underside of the engine. If there is no cooling water, its absence will quickly be indicated by smoke, the smell of overheated metal, rubber and plastic, the sound of screeching pistons, silence and, finally, enthusiastic profanity on your part.
On inboard engines, freeze damage will be indicated by green-colored fluid in the bilges, loss of engine coolant, or white smoke in the exhaust accompanied by the smell of burning glycol. I have seen grown men cry when they walk up to their boat in the storage yard and see a green puddle beneath the hull drains.
On inboard engines, also be sure to check all of the hoses and hose connections on the cooling system. Particularly pay attention to the hoses on keel coolers. I once traced a nagging cooling problem on one of my boats to a flap on the inside of a hose leading to a keel cooler.
Both inboards and outboards will sometimes refuse to turn over because coolant has leaked into a cylinder and hydro-locked the engine. With a large crowbar and brute strength, you can sometimes break a piston - or your knuckles - on such a problem.
HULLS
On fiberglass boats, look for blisters and cracked or missing gel coat. Fix the damage before you launch or you will make things worse. If there are large cracks, look to see if things are moving and need to be strengthened. Fiberglass is subject to flex cracks and ultimately to fatigue failures. You may need to beef up the stiffeners if that is the case with your boat.
On aluminum or steel boats, look for cracking, missing rivets and corrosion, particularly around screws, bolts or through-hulls. Put on new sacrificial anodes to protect your metal boat from corrosion.
Never, never, never use brass, copper, or bronze fittings, or through-hulls on an aluminum boat. Combined with saltwater, this combination makes a self-destructive battery.
On wooden vessels, check for rot, loose fastenings, missing caulking, and missing paint or varnish.
On poorly fiber-glassed wooden boats, look for a sucker willing to buy it.
On skin-covered boats, see the experts on skin sewing in Barrow.
Oh yeah, and on any and all boats, make sure to replace the hull-drain plugs before launching.
ELECTRICAL SYSTEM
Charge the batteries slowly. Tighten all electrical connections. Better yet, clean and tighten all electrical connections. The marine environment is hard on electrical equipment, and you will never be able to stop maintaining these systems.
If you must replace connectors, solder them and use shrink tubing to cover the connections. Your future stress level will decrease exponentially as a result. Never use the hull as part of the grounding system. If you have problems trouble-shooting a piece of equipment or system, check the ground side. Most gremlins lurk there.
PLUG IN YOUR BRAIN
The marine environment is different and worth thinking about. Sit down and review the things you are going to do and try to anticipate the situations and problems you will encounter.
Be smart. Be safe. Be courteous.
A READER BITES (BIGHTS)
A reader called to chastise me for misspelling "bight" as "bite" in July of last year. It was a column that dealt with safety at sea and encouraged mariners not to step in the bite (bight) of a line. The bight of a line is a loop in the line. Because the marine environment is dynamic, a slack line can quickly become a tight line, and people have been badly injured when so caught.
The expression has also come to mean being in a tough spot - the sea-going equivalent of being between a rock and a hard place.
The faithful reader had me dead to rights, or is that rites? I appreciate readers straightening me out when I'm off course, particularly on matters of substance.
As to my lack of spelling skill, I can only quote Thomas Jefferson, and with pleasure. When assailed about his spelling he said: "I have nothing but contempt for a man who can only spell a word one way."
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