The cool weather came in fast this year. The mornings are already down in the fifties, and the light’s quitting earlier every week. A maple down the road is half turned. There’s still boating left for anybody who doesn’t mind a jacket, but the warm part of the season is behind us, and it’s only getting cooler. Sooner than you’d like, it will be time to prep for winter.
Every year it goes the same way at the shop. The phone stays quiet right up until the first frost, and the way this Fall’s going, that won’t be long. Then everybody calls the same week, wanting the boat winterized and put away. The ones who waited end up scheduled out, and some of them don’t get an indoor spot, because those go fast. You don’t want to be one of those calls. Get it handled now, while there’s room and time to do it right.
A Maine winter is hard on a boat that isn’t ready
A boat that sits all winter with water still in it is asking for trouble. Water left in the block or the cooling passages freezes, and freezing water cracks whatever’s holding it. That’s a cracked block and a new powerhead, and it costs a whole lot more than a winterizing ever would. Old fuel is the other issue. Gas left to sit for five or six months goes stale and gums up the carburetor or the injectors, and you find out in the spring when the thing won’t start.
Winterizing takes care of both. You put a stabilizer in the fuel so it keeps, run it through the engine, fog the cylinders so they don’t corrode, pull the water out, and get antifreeze into the boat. The lower unit oil gets changed. None of it’s complicated if you know the boat and you’ve got the right tools on hand, and someone who has done this a hundred times. If you’d rather not crawl around a cold engine in the driveway a month from now, that’s what the shop is for. Either way, get it on the calendar.
The indoor spots go first
Storage is the other half of it, and it’s the part that runs out. We keep a lot of boats inside over the winter, and even our space fills up. Indoor is the easy winter. It’s out of the snow and the wind, and it comes out in spring the way it went in. It costs more than parking it in the yard, sure, and for a lot of people it’s worth it, especially for anything with a nice finish or electronics you’d rather not leave under a tarp all winter.
Outdoor storage with a good shrink wrap gets most boats through a Maine winter just fine, and it’s easier on the wallet. A bad shrink wrap is worse than no cover at all, though, because it traps moisture and holds it against the boat for months. That’s why it’s important to find a storage facility that knows how to do it right.
Get ahead of the frost
None of this means you have to pull the boat this weekend. It means the decision is worth making now, while you’ve still got choices. Book the storage, get on the winterizing schedule, and you can run the boat right up until your drop-off date knowing the hard part’s already handled. That beats standing in the driveway in November with a frost warning on your phone and no plan.
It pays off in the spring, too. The boat that got stored dry and winterized right is the one that fires up on the first warm day and goes straight into the water. The one that sat wet and full of stale gas is the one in our shop in April, waiting on a part to be delivered while the first warm days go by.
Gagnon’s has been storing and servicing boats out of Livermore Falls since 1960, and the building we store them in has been doing that job about as long. We handle the storage and the winterizing both, indoor or outdoor, however you want to do it. If you want a spot this year, now’s the time to call, before the calendar fills up. Come by the shop or give us a ring at 207-897-4681.
