A Guide to Keeping Your Family Boat in Excellent Condition

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When your family owns a boat for recreation, you will want to care for it properly to ensure it remains in excellent condition. It's tempting to think that your boat will stay in optimum shape without any attention, but boats require regular maintenance. As with automobiles, it's good to get in the habit of inspecting your boat regularly. Some inspections should be done weekly, while others at the beginning or end of each season. If you are looking for a comprehensive guide to keep your family boat in excellent condition, then keep on reading this article.

Prioritize Boat Engine Maintenance

Just like your car, your boat engine requires regular maintenance. Besides ensuring that your family is safe, a well-maintained engine will give you more years of service than an ignored one. You don't need to be a mechanic to maintain your boat's engine. By taking preventive measures and using recommended parts and accessories such as Mercury outboard parts, you can keep your boat's motor running for a long time. However, before you perform any engine maintenance on your boat, it's advisable to check your manufacturer's recommendation first.

Clean your Boat's Interior and Exterior Surfaces

While you might think that your boat remains clean as it floats in water, the truth is that your family boat requires regular cleaning for many reasons besides showing its beauty. For one, cleaning your boat's exterior surfaces helps prevent the spread of invasive plant and animal species. You never know what living species came into contact with your boat while on the waters.

Secondly, cleaning your boat helps maintain its structure by keeping the outside surface intact. Over time the salt from the water can wear away at the outside of your boat, causing abrasions and scratches that can be expensive to repair. To clean the exterior, you might be required to lift the boat from the water to clean all the dirt from the lower surface. For the inside, use cleansers recommended for each type of material.

Properly Store your Boat

Proper storage is critical when it comes to protecting your boat from weather-related damage. During winter, you need to protect your boat from ice, rain, and snow. You can't seal it airtight either. It requires airflow to prevent mold from building up. Also, ensure that lines are clean to avoid chemicals like fuel and oil from degrading or destroying anything before storing your boat.

Change the Oil in Your Boat's Motor

If your family's boat has an engine, you should change its oil to ensure it remains in top condition. Changing the oil in your boat's engine will require removing the vessel from the water to prevent the polluted oil from contaminating the water or the vessel itself. Make sure to regularly check and change the oil in your boat as you would with your vehicle. It helps to protect your engine from becoming worn out and scarred by debris.

Check the Electrical Lines

Your boat's electrical lines will likely degrade over time, with dirt and mud being the leading causes. If you want your boat to remain in excellent condition, then you must regularly inspect these lines and make necessary repairs or replacements right away.

Hire a Professional after an Extended Seasonal Use

Unless you are a mechanic or have several years of boat maintenance, you'll probably require the services of a specialist to look over the boat and address particular issues. This is especially true when the time comes to fix and upgrade more challenging inner workings of the boat like the bilge pump and the engine. Professional mechanics often have the technical know-how to add more life to your family's boat to attend to these issues.

Clean and Check Batteries

Much like electrical lines, your boat's batteries are likely to degrade over time even if you are not using them. To keep your boat in an excellent position, perform a battery check at least twice a season. You can use a voltage meter to test your battery's usability. You should also check the battery connections and clean them regularly to ensure electrical juice goes to where it's needed most.

Conclusion

Proper family boat maintenance will keep your vessel running better and longer and, most importantly, create a safe experience for you and your family. While the above steps might feel a lot when viewed at once, completing them will make a difference when you look back on the life of your boat.