Winterizing for leaving in Chesapeak slip?

[warren631]

Newbe question: Trying to make up my mind about pulling my 26D out or leaving it in the slip over the winter. Trailering is a big hassle and there might be some nice days to go sailing. What winterizing should I do? Marina reported only a few days with only 1/2 inch of ice gone by noon last winter. Lift the outboard out of the water and empty any cooling water in it? Fog the outboard. Put antifreeze in the water ballast - how much? Can't afford a bubbler so I'm thinking of leaving a little sail up so any wind will rock the boat and keep ice from freezing around it. What else should I do?

[dxg4848]

Put antifreeze in the water ballast - how much?

Considering your ballast tank takes 1200 lb of water, and one gallon of antifreeze is about 8 lb you need roughly 150 gallons of antifreeze

Three 55 gallon drums of this stuff will do it

http://www.westmarine.com/buy/pure-ocea ... _-MB-_-PDP

[Seapup]

What part of the bay? (salinity)

None of the boats really come out of the water in the lower bay.

I used it as a good excuse to run the motor and take the boat out during the winter.

[warren631]

I'm at Baltimore. I was thinking of just adding a bottle or two of antifreeze into the ballast vent hole. Wouldn't that be enough?

[warren631]

Should I try to pump out the water ballast? How?

[Bilgemaster]

Should I try to pump out the water ballast? How?

Obviously getting her out of the drink and onto her trailer or on the hard for the winter would be best, but if that's problematic, then you really only need to get most of the water out of the ballast for just a couple-few bottles of pink RV antifreeze like this stuff (NOT toxic engine antifreeze!) to do its thing, right? So just get yourself a cheapo drill pump like this one and cut an old garden hose up (one end down the vent hole--one end out the hatch), and just let 'er run and run and run 'til she's spurting mostly air. Then just pour in the antifreeze. A little bit splashed around in the bilge couldn't hurt either.

If you're not pulling the engine for winter servicing and storage, you might do well to at least drain the carb bowl (there's often a little screw for this) and pull the spark plug(s) and blast a little fogging oil into the cylinder(s). Not a perfect solution, but she'll certainly slumber a little happier and start up a little perkier in Spring.

[warren631]

Thanks Bilgemaster.

[Tomfoolery]

If you're not pulling the engine for winter servicing and storage, you might do well to at least drain the carb bowl (there's often a little screw for this) and pull the spark plug(s) and blast a little fogging oil into the cylinder(s). Not a perfect solution, but she'll certainly slumber a little happier and start up a little perkier in Spring.

OBs supposedly self-drain when shut off, but I'd be concerned about ice in the lower unit around the prop shaft, with the engine tilted up. Unless the water is blown out and the hub is shrink-wrapped, maybe with antifreeze in there in case some water gets in anyway. Maybe it's not a real concern, but that's how my boat was winterized when I first looked at it.

Personally, I'd remove the OB and take it home for the winter. Do the usual fogging and bowl drain routine. Like I do with my BF50, though it stays on the boat, of course. No water in the hub, as the OB stays vertical. But for a small OB, the garage is a nice place to live for a while.

OP: It would help if you added the OB make/hp to your profile, in the 'location' spot (since you can't add anything to the 'sailboat' field). Just sayin'.

[Bilgemaster]

[,,,snip!]

Personally, I'd remove the OB and take it home for the winter. Do the usual fogging and bowl drain routine. Like I do with my BF50, though it stays on the boat, of course. No water in the hub, as the OB stays vertical. But for a small OB, the garage is a nice place to live for a while.

OP: It would help if you added the OB make/hp to your profile, in the 'location' spot (since you can't add anything to the 'sailboat' field). Just sayin'.

SInce we're talking about a 26D, I'd imagine there may be a 9.9 or 15 hp dangling off the stern. So, we're talking about a reasonably handy 75 lbs. or so compared to well over 200 lbs. for our Honda BF50s. So yeah, if you can get her off the transom and onto the dock without dunkin' her, that would be the wisest thing to do. If it's a new (to you) boat, that would give you a chance to give her a good once-over (fresh oil, lower unit fluid, pull the prop and claw out any old fishing line that's found its way in there and then grease her up...A fresh impeller for the cooling system would also be a superb idea unless you put the last one in yourself. Former owners have a knack for claiming that they "just had a new impeller put in about a year ago", when in fact, it was maybe during the first Clinton Administration. So yeah, if it's a handy little put-putter like you most likely have, go on by there with a burly buddy, some good stout rope, and maybe some tackle or a pulley (your mast-raising system might work) and pull the damned thing off and do right by it. Next season when she's puttering along happily with her pee hole flowing like Secretariat's perched on the stern instead of you desperately and fruitlessly yanking that cord while wafting in an eyewatering stench of something like burning tires in a Rwandan garbage pit as you drift towards those rocks, you'll thank yourself. Or, you can just fog up the cylinder(s), tilt her up, and hope for the best.

[warren631]

If I didn't want to bring home my OB wouldn't my little 9.9 be better off down in the water rather than tilted up ? Wouldn't the water temperature be higher than the air over the winter? Procedure: Tilt it up, run with fresh water hose, disconnect hose, run it to empty the cooling water - till no pee, disconnect the gas and run it dry, take out the plugs, fog the cylinders, turn it over a couple times to lube the cylinders, put back the plugs, tilt it down, put a poly bag over it, bless it and see you in the Spring?

[Bilgemaster]

Actually, I think you might be right about storing the engine down in the water. At least that's what the BoatUS Winterization Guide suggests (see page 13), though I might be wary of running her without cooling water even for a minute or two, as you seem to be describing, having read enough warnings "out there" against the practice. All one can safely say is that the engine's manual should be your first guide, and whatever anyone else may suggest viewed as secondary. One can almost always scare up a free copy of most any engine's user and service manuals online, though the service manuals tend to be a bit harder to find for free. If stumped, you might do well to contact the manufacturer before buying one from some eBay pirate.

[Russ]

I wouldn't leave it in the water. Bad idea. If the water freezes it will scrape up your hull.
Leave sail up..no. The ice will form at night when there is no wind. During the day a windy day will blow the boat all over. If the boat is frozen in, it will do bad things.

Antifreeze...why not dump rock salt down there. A LOT of it. Won't kill fish when you dump it.
I wouldn't sleep well with full ballast tanks and boat in the water. If you get a cold snap, stuff will freeze and who knows. Then there is the snow loads that sink boats. Not worth it.

If this were a big keel boat that required a travel lift, leaving it the water with a bubbler on a thermostat might be an option.
However, it's relatively easy to trailer the boat and leave it fully rigged on dry land, why wouldn't you do that? Yea, it's a PITA, but fixing a scratched, gouged up hull is worse.

my 2 cents.

--Russ

[Bilgemaster]

Yikes! If she were berthed in Bozeman, Montana, Home of the protracted minus 20º cold snap, I'd be the first to heartily concur: "Get that poor girl on a trailer out of the way of that glacier!...A-A-And pack 'er in rock salt, so the deer will lick her and keep her warm with their breath!" But still, we're talking about the relatively balmy Chesapeake down here. Sure, it's a calculated risk, and there's a reason Sharp's Island Light has been leaning at a 15° angle since '77 (Answer: big ass ice floes damn near knocked her over), but it's not like we're already giddily smearing our snowshoes with whale blubber in anticipation of the annual Jog Along The Ice Floes Festival next month. I mean, I was out there happily planing along down the Potomac shirtless on Tuesday. (And yes, it was sublime, and Sunday holds promise for more of the same.)

By the way, where are you exactly, Warren631? I'm no expert, in fact the stench of raw noob hangs heavily upon my shoulders, but if you're less than an hour or so from Woodbridge, VA, and could use some moral support, a beefy 4WD tow beast, or a second pair of hands, I could pencil you in on my dance card some weekend soon. I'm ham and mushroom with extra cheese, by the way...Prosciutto and champignons better still...

[Russ]

When I lived in NJ it was not that far north of Baltimore. Marina froze SOLID a few years. Not pretty. Bublers kept our boats floating. But it was dicey a few times. Floating junk scraping the waterline.
I wouldn't risk it when it's relatively easy to self pull your boat out on to dry land.

But hey, go ahead. Risk it. Keep the motor down in the drink of cold water. Not me. I'd pull her out. To each his own.

[Bilgemaster]

When I lived in NJ it was not that far north of Baltimore. Marina froze SOLID a few years. Not pretty. Bublers kept our boats floating. But it was dicey a few times. Floating junk scraping the waterline.
I wouldn't risk it when it's relatively easy to self pull your boat out on to dry land.

But hey, go ahead. Risk it. Keep the motor down in the drink of cold water. Not me. I'd pull her out. To each his own.

All kidding aside, I'm actually with you on this, RussMT. My gals are both gonna winter well away from water's edge cozily on their trailers this year and every year, with pretty much weekly status checks, since I live quite near the marina, and it turns out there's apparently nothing I like better than to swing on by the boatyard in the dead of winter to tinker with this or that. In fact, I'll likely be pampering both with tarp-and-PVC-pipe blankets for the first time (as far as I know) this winter to boot.

Clearly it's way better to get them out of the drink. There's minimal risk of damage and less general wear and tear--to say nothing of all that lovely marine growth. Having done the whole scrapey-sandy-sweaty bottom painting shebang once for both boats, I'd vastly prefer henceforth to just touch them up. My own preferences aside though, what should one best do if one had to or even wanted to leave her tied up at the slip for some reason some winter?