By March, the yard smells of bottom paint and fiberglass resin. The pressure washer’s been running since seven. Each trailer in the lot has a clipboard dangling from its bow eye, and the service board in the shop is packed with so many work orders that it resembles a wallpaper sample.
Spring commissioning season is here. And if you’ve done it before, you know the routine — tear the shrink wrap off, cross your fingers and hope nothing froze over winter. But here’s what your owner’s manual doesn’t tell you: The difference between a smooth launch day and an aggravating one usually comes down to maybe an hour of work and forty bucks’ worth of supplies. What matters isn’t complicated. It’s just easy to skip.
So here’s the list — the real one, firsthand from the guys in the Gagnon service bay who’ve commissioned hundreds of boats and seen every shortcut come back to bite ’em.
Start With the Engine. Every Time.
That’s where most people start — and they’re right to. But they tend to stop too early.
Change the oil and filter. You probably knew that. But did you take out the spark plugs and check them, too? Leaving the plugs in a four-stroke outboard too long and letting them hibernate all winter encrusted with fogging oil will leave you hearing misfires for the first 20 minutes of running, making you think something’s terribly wrong. Scrub them with a wire brush or just buy new — a group of NGK plugs for most outboards is around twelve bucks, and it’s the best insurance you’ll buy all season.
Check your fuel system next. If you put in stabilizer during the fall — Sta-Bil or Star Tron, either is fine — your fuel should be fine. If you didn’t, and there’s ethanol gas in the tank from October, you could have phase separation. That’s when the ethanol becomes so saturated with moisture it separates from the gasoline and drops to the bottom. You’ll recognize it when the engine coughs and dies at the most inopportune time. Best action: drain off the old gas if it appears cloudy, refill with fresh, and add a water-separating fuel filter if you don’t have one.
Replace the lower unit oil. Both drain and fill plugs. Check what comes out — if it’s milky or gray instead of clear amber, water got in, which indicates your seals need attention. Don’t ignore this one. A lower unit rebuild is a lot more expensive than changing out a couple of seals.
The Cooling System Gets Overlooked. Don’t Let It.
On raw-water-cooled engines (that’s most outboards), the impeller is the heart of the cooling system. And impellers don’t last forever. The rubber vanes can take a set during winter; that is, they become permanently deformed into a curve and will not pump water well. If yours is older than two seasons, get a new one. A new impeller kit for most Yamaha or Mercury outboards is thirty to fifty dollars. An overheated engine costs thousands.
You might also flush the cooling system with a garden hose and muffs before your first run. You’d be amazed what can accumulate in there during a Maine winter — salt residue, sediment, sometimes even small mud dauber nests if anything was left exposed.
Electrical: The Boring Stuff That Will Ruin Your Day
No one gets thrilled over electrical inspections. But nothing ruins a day on the water quicker than a dead battery sitting at the boat launch with eight trucks backed up behind you.
Make sure to charge your battery all the way up, then go ahead and check it with a multimeter. At rest, a healthy 12-volt marine battery should read 12.6 to 12.8 volts. Anything lower than 12.4 and it’s on borrowed time. Look for corrosion on the terminals — that green fuzz is not decoration — and smear a thin layer of dielectric grease or terminal protector spray over them. CRC Marine makes a good one.
Test your navigation lights. All of them. Bow light, stern light and a masthead if you have one. Test the horn. Pour a cup of water into the bilge for testing, and observe how the float switch triggers the bilge pump. And what if your bilge pump doesn’t activate? Fix that before anything else. That’s not optional.
Below the Waterline
This is the kind of stuff you only really can do while the boat’s still on a trailer, or in the stands.
Inspect your zincs — the sacrificial anodes on the lower unit, trim tabs and any other place where you’ve got dissimilar metals in seawater. If they’re more than half eroded, replace them. In the salt waters near Saco and Biddeford, zincs do their work. Don’t be shocked if they require replacing each and every season. Depending on the system, a set of zincs will cost you between twenty-five and forty dollars. A corroded lower unit housing is four figures.
Check for blisters, cracks or any areas where the gelcoat took a hit on the hull. Sand and repaint the bottom if you’re in the water for the season — Interlux or Pettit are both good bottom paint brands that hold up well under Casco Bay and Saco Bay conditions. If you are a trailer boater who launches and retrieves every time, you might be able to avoid bottom paint altogether, but do clean the hull well and wax.
Safety Gear: The Five-Minute Inspection That Nobody Does
Here’s an honest question: when’s the last time you actually inspected your life jackets? Not only confirmed they were in the compartment, but pulled them out and checked them?
The auto-inflate mechanism also needs to be checked on inflatable PFDs; what you need to see is the green indicator which means that the CO2 cartridges are within use. Foam PFDs degrade over time. If the foam is crunchy or the fabric tearing, it’s finished. You also must have one wearable PFD per person on board, plus a throwable Type IV. That’s not a suggestion. That’s Coast Guard law.
Check your flares. They have expiration dates printed on them, so expired flares don’t count toward your legal requirement. A standard coastal flare kit costs approximately thirty bucks. Fire extinguisher — check the gauge, make sure the pin isn’t broken, make sure it hasn’t just been sitting in a compartment corroding since 2019. First aid kit. Sound-producing device. Registration and documentation.
This all takes five minutes. And it’s the five minutes that count most if something goes sideways.
The Stuff People Forget
Every spring, the Gagnon service team observes the same few things that could’ve been caught with a quick once-over:
Drain plugs. Every season, at least once, someone launches without the drain plug. The bilge pump buys you a bit of time — but not much. Stick a reminder on your ignition key if you must.
Steering. Hydraulic steering should feel nice and smooth with no hard spots. With cable steering, inspect for rigidity and lubricate the cable with marine grease. Winter takes a toll on cables, particularly if any moisture has found its way into the housing.
Trailer lights. They worked in October. They might not work now. Corroded ground connections are the most common cause of these types of problems — scrub the terminals with sandpaper, then coat them with dielectric grease.
The through-hulls. Open every seacock. Close every seacock. Make sure they actually move. A seized seacock that you can’t shut during an emergency is a real problem.
When to Do It Yourself and When to Call in Help
Anything on this list is perfectly possible in your driveway on a Saturday morning. Oil change, plugs, zincs, battery, safety gear, bilge pump — that’s all you. Much of the commissioning work can be done yourself if you’re comfortable with basic tools.
But there are some things worth taking to the pros. Lower unit seal replacement. Anything to do with the fuel injection system. Hydraulic steering service. Gelcoat repair larger than a small chip. And if your engine sat all winter and wasn’t fogged or stabilized, and you don’t know what you’re looking at — bring it in. A professional commissioning at Gagnon costs a few hundred dollars depending on the boat, and it carries with it the peace of mind that nothing was overlooked.
Because here’s the thing about spring commissioning: It’s not glamorous. It’s not the fun part. The fun part is idling out of the Saco River on that first warm Saturday in May, trimming up, pushing the throttle forward and remembering exactly why you own a boat.
The commissioning is what ensures you actually get there.
Ready to prepare your boat for the season? Gagnon’s service team is scheduling spring commissioning now. Call us or visit us in Livermore Falls — we’ll get you on the water.
