Unless you live in Florida, every year, you have to go through the struggle of winter. The joy, the rush, and the excitement of taking your jet boat out every weekend (or every day if you are able) are about to end. Time store the boat away now. Til the next summer. But just storing it off to your garage or some storage facility is not all that you need to do. You have to prepare it for the winter. Here are some tips that we have gathered to prepare your jet boat on a hibernation period.
Winterizing your jet boat is one maintenance step that you would not want to forget.
Here are some tips on how to winterize a jet boat. You could visit your trusted boat clinic to do it for you, but they might not be able to tend to your needs immediately. Or you can do it yourself. The best tip is to do it a few weeks before winter comes. You can do simple things like draining the water if it is not self-draining and use antifreeze if necessary. Change the oil and clean or change the oil filter, treat your fuel, and change the fuel filter, fog the engine, and grease every part that needs to be greased.
Winterizing your jet boat may be a little strenuous for you, but it is crucial. I get that you would want to be able to maximize the time that you can still ride it freely, especially if you live somewhere with a long winter. But the winter season can really cause a lot of problems for your jet boat. As we have mentioned earlier, start before winter comes. You do not want to be doing this just as the snow is falling in your area.
Visit A Trusted Boat Shop
If the best thing you can do for your jet boat is to take it to a boat maintenance shop that is certified to work on jet boat engines. Your trusted boat maintenance shop might do a better job than you could since they should know what they are doing. It is their job so you can trust them to prepare your boat for winter.
However, you might need to wait in line. If you take your jet boat to the shop when the winter is already around the corner as this may be their busiest time. You most certainly are not the only one who would opt to have your jet boat serviced in the shop to have it winterized. So do it as early as you can.
The DIY Method
Drain the water or put antifreeze on it. This may be one of the most critical steps in winterizing your jet boats. If your area experiences harsh winter storms, you would really want to drain the water off of your jet boat. Water expands as it solidifies and becomes ice, which may produce cracks on your boat’s engine. Draining the water may differ depending on the type of boat that you have and the engine it has.
In most inboards and stern drives engine, you would want to circulate an antifreeze agent throughout the cooling system to prevent ice from forming and damaging the engine. Propylene Glycol is a common type of anti-freezing agent that is being used to winterize these types of engines. While outboard engines are more likely to require you to flush the waters out. You can see if there are special instructions to do it on the user manual or if it has a self-draining system program. Jet drives engine, on the other hand, may only require you to just run it a few times on short intervals, to prevent overheating the engine, to flush all the water in it.
Check The Oil
As a great practice in terms o taking care of any boat, it is essential to make sure to change the oil every so often depending on use And manufacturers recommendation.
Part of winterizing your jet boat is to change it’s oil before you store it. Make sure that you check up on it and change it. By keeping up with your boat oil replacement schedule, you make sure that the engine will not dry up, the oil will not be stale, and the engine will not get stomped.
You would also want to run it for a few minutes before you replace the oil and replace the oil filter with a new one. This allows the oil to run through the engine and pick up impurities as well as lowering its viscosity. After the job is completed, run your engine. This way, you can also check if the newly replaced oil filter is not leaking.
Treat The Fuel
You need to check the fuel filters or replace them if needed. You must also check if it is not broken and or leaking. If you use gasoline with ethanol, remember that It can damage rubber fuel lines and plastic connectors and other parts of your fuel system. This is really bad and can result in some severe problems and even leave you stranded in the middle of the water.
If you cant run ethanol-free gasoline, it is essential that you put stabilizers on your fuel to prevent oxidation. You would also not want to layoff your boat with a full tank to allow for expansion as liquid tends to expand on cold temperatures.
Fog the Engine
Often used with fule stabilizers, fogging oils helps treat the fuel for the lubrication and prevent corrosion on your engine. This helps metal to be protected for a longer time. Make sure to administer the proper amount of fogging oil to your engine. This will help protect it’s internal surface and cylinders from corrosion, especially if you have to store your boat for an extended period.
Grease
As you probably notice most of our steps aim to protect our boat from either drying up or moisture that may cause corrosion. Both of these are important to make sure that we will still be able to drive our boat once winter is done. Another thing to consider is also to make sure that we protect gears, bearings, joints, and all moving parts of our boat. You want to protect these parts from corrosion and making sure that they don’t get stuck.
While the engine is the most essential part that we need to winterize, there are also the surficial parts of the boat. We also need to protect the surface of our vessel during winter. Fiberglass and vinyl can suffer as well during this season. Extreme cold can cause fiberglass to become brittle and crack. If your boat is made up of fiberglass or has any parts made out of it, you need to make sure that it is appropriately protected from the cold. Especially if you are going to store it outside wher snow can accumulate and might cause the boat cover to cave in.
Dry or humid conditions can be harsh to vinyl, which can make them dry out and crack. Molds and mildew can form when there is moisture that will ruin your vinyl interior. There are various vinyl cleaners and protectants that you can buy on the market to prevent such growth. It would also be of big help if you can acquire a boat cover that allows as little moisture to be trapped inside to prevent more moisture problems for your boat.
Related Question
Is It Expensive To Winterize A Boat? According to our research, it would cost you around $300 on average to winterize your boat. It may vary depending on the size of your boat, of course, the bigger your vessel is the more expensive it is to winterize. Keep in mind that the figure that we gave is just the average cost, not including the storage expenses.
Part of owning a boat is making sure that it is properly maintained and well taken care of so you will not encounter problems as you take your boat out. As a responsible owner of a vessel, you would want to prepare for winterizing your boat if you live in the area that has a winter season. This is a critical step in protecting your vessel during this time. While it might be expensive to properly winterize your jet boat only to de-winterize it again later. It might be more costly for you if you did not winterize it.
Conclusion
Guess winterizing boats are really expensive, but not preparing your boats for winter will be much more expensive once you take out your jet boat from hibernation. Imagine having a pit engine, moldy interior, and cracked hull, is it still salvageable? Owning a boat does not end with just buying it and enjoying it, you need to also prepare for its maintenance. And if you do happen to live in an area with a winter season, you should know how to winterize your boat.
