Feel sorry for people in San Diego and other places where boats stay in the water year-round.
When can the owners gussie them up?
Not a problem in the cleverly seasonal Midwest, where winter’s first cold breaths bring thoughts of spring.
Spring?
That’s what boat owners should be thinking of now, according to folks at local boatyards.
“You can’t wait till March,” said Jim Ward-low, storage manager for Skipper Bud’s in Winthrop Harbor. “I think, as much as anything, having a boat ready in the spring is as much what they ask for as when. If you want a lot of cosmetic gelcoat work, if you want carpets, if you want upholstery, let us know in September and October so it can be ready in March or April.”
Winter is definitely the time for the big projects. In fact, two at Skipper Bud’s involvereplacing the wooden core between layers of fiberglass in the hull of a 54-foot, 1974 Trojan deck house motor yacht and installing a hydraulic swim platform for drive-on, drive-off personal watercraft access on another.
But this is the time for the little jobs too.
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“It’s the run-of-the-mill tune-up or last-minute items that can get backed up. . . . Procrastination is a killer,” Wardlow said.
“Once a boat’s 10 years old, [manufacturers] don’t stock a lot of parts,” added Grant Crowley of Crowley’s Yacht Yard on the Calumet River. “Sometimes it takes time to track parts down, and sometimes we have to make parts from scratch.”
Phil Pollard, service manager at Crowley’s, suggests including a laundry list of things to be done when you bring the boat in.
“As we put the boats away, we start looking at the requests and start making estimates and get things scheduled,” Pollard said. “Even where we park the boat in the yard is affected. If they want a paint job, we don’t bury them, so we can get them into the paint shop.”
Speak up even if you’re considering a project. “We can put in a work order, go generate a quote, spec out the new engine, etc. That way they can decide `Go’ or `No go,'” Pollard said.
As Wardlow put it: “You have to approach your boat with the mentality: `Prepare for the worst, but hope for the best.'”
Among things to check out in the fall is osmotic blistering. That’s what happens when water seeps through gelcoat and combines with soluble substances in the hull to form acids that can cause delamination.
“When you haul a boat–just when it’s hauled–is when to look for osmotic blistering,” Pollard said. “As the boat dries out, the blisters go away a little bit and become less noticeable. If you catch it early, it’s much easier to remedy. It’s tough to spot it when the boat’s in the water.”
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Mike Esposito is a US SAILING-certified club race officer. Contact him at MEsposito@tribune .com.