How not to winter-cover your boat

Hello!

A few days ago Artur and I went to the lake to cover the boat for winter. We did so with the help of an old commercial poster, rope, anchor chain, a few twigs of birch and clear packing tape. The results of this can briefly described like this:

Well, good! I uploaded the pictures into my Facebook gallery. Half an hour later I started receiving messages about the critical mistake we did: wrapped the boat tightly into plastic. Turns out that this has ruined quite many good boats. Water vapour needs airflow to escape from below the canvas. Otherwise it will seep into microcracks on the hull and start bulging up the plywood. The other problem is that this heavy type of tarp will rub and wear on the paintjob of the boat. Elastic ropes will come loose and so will the tarp. Especially over the winter, since it tends to be a windy season.

Ideally, we want something like this:

Image courtesy: www.shipshapecanvas.com

That is – at best a large free space between the deck and the tarp. We will fix the problem in a week. A good way to hold the tarp down are water canisters.

Will write a season recap soon, with a big sailing gallery!

Cheers,
Uku

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