Quality time with your boat
Officer Joe Alvarez

You find yourself with some free time on your hands and you decide to visit with your boat. Whether your boat sits in a marina or just outside of your door on a trailer in your driveway or garage, take advantage of the visit. Grab a small toolbox and take items such as a ratchet and screwdriver set, a pencil, a pad of paper, and your electronics and engine owner's manuals with you.

Walk around your boat and tighten all the screws, nuts and bolts you can see. Hardware can loosen up with the pounding of a boat running across the water or bouncing on a trailer. Pay particular attention to the bolts that hold the rails and cleats to the hull. If you find any screws that won't turn down tightly, break a toothpick into small pieces and push the pieces into the screw hole. Drive the screw into the hole containing the pieces of the toothpick and tighten it down. The screw will turn down tightly with the aid of the toothpick pieces.

Turn anything on in your boat that may be battery operated. Make note of the battery sizes and the number of batteries required by each device. Make note of any device that may need replacement batteries. Bring fresh batteries to get everything back to life the next time you visit.

Remove the navigation bulbs from their sockets and clean the metal part of the bulbs with emery paper. Roll the emery paper, gritty side out, and twist it around the inside of the sockets to clean them out. Make note of any bulbs that may need to be replaced and bring a couple with you the next time you visit.

If you've never taken the time to go over all of the functions of your electronics such as your GPS, depth sounder or radar, now would be a good time to do so. Open the manuals that come with each instrument and go through them page by page. Try all the functions on each device. You'll be surprised at all the things these devices can do that you didn't even know about.

Finally, with owner's manual in hand, try to locate some of the vital fuel or other electronic parts of your engine. Picture a failure in one of these parts and what you could do to repair the part to get you back into port. Spend some time with your manual and engine. You'll be surprised at what you can do if your engine quits from fuel starvation or overheating.

Keep your vessel in shipshape and you'll improve your chances of many trouble-free years. Remember, safe boating is smart boating.


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