Good morning all. Hope the world is treating everyone well this cold/crisp December morning. I had to scrape the windows for the first time this season. It sucks. I'm a tropical person, not a wintery person. I like sunlight and warmth, not so much the cold and dark of winter. We have a good life setup here though, so I'm not moving anytime soon.
Now, I have a garage. It's attached to the house, and would keep the precipitation OFF my car in the winter. There's a problem though. The two bays are currently occupied. One with my wifes car, which shall forever live in the garage unless I want to consider a divorce (I do not), the other with our boat. It's a great boat, we've had it for 5 full seasons now, and it's lived in our garage the whole time. SUPER convenient if I want to work on it, or just go sit in it in the garage and drink a beer to get a break from the shenanigans of having two small boys in the house. I like having the boat close by, however I'm starting to think I might like having my car in the garage more than the boat in the garage. So I'm considering moving the boat to an outdoor storage location.
Now, our previous boat, it was nice too. We really liked it. It was stored "semi-outdoors". It sat in my grandfathers garage with the nose poking out of the front. His garage was built in the 50's and had an atrociously leaky roof. It basically acted like a shade for keeping "most" of the things, and "most" of the sun off the boat. Here's a super grainy old picture to show what that looked like. We lived in a condo, and this spot was on the way to the lake, and gave us a reason to go visit grandad on a regular basis. It worked out well for us.
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Grandad still has the garage, however there is no way our AR190 could fit in there. Even with the tower down it won't go. The opening is just over 74in high, and our last boat would JUST miss the header as we backed in. HOWEVER, I now work with a company that has some huge space in the back lot. There are a number of people that store boats and trailers back there. Here's what that looks like. I took this a few years ago when I parked the truck/boat back there before we left early on a Friday afternoon. The intent of the picture was to show how large some of our equipment is to friends/family, however it serves to illustrate the conditions for storage I'm consdering.
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You can see the other trailers over there. There is a 24ft Crownline sitting there now as well. I've been told it's no problem to add mine into the collection, and they'll even furnish me with a "clicker" to get in and out of the gate as I see fit. The place is fairly secure overall. We have a single entrance into/out of the back lot, and it's surrounded with 7ft tall fence with razor wire on the top of it. We also have surveillance cameras on that entrance, as well as each side of the building that covers "most" of the fenceline that could be cut through to access the lot. We're in a relatively mixed business area with some heavy industry, and some commercial. You can barely see the boats/trailers from the road. Here's a street view. Boats and trailers are under the arrow. Even with all the employee cars missing you can barely see back there.
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SO, my big concerns in moving the boat over here are snow loads when I'm not here to brush it off (weekends, etc), and UV protection for the cover. I have good radial tires on it, and I don't think those will care to sit over the winter. I've blown out the engine/water box, and am pretty confident on that as being adequate for winterization in this climate.
- Do I empty all the "stuff" out of the boat for the winter?
- Do I need to be concerned with heat cycling and the condition of the tube/boards/ropes/vests?
- I have the black "premium deluxe" mooring cover for it, and the straps/poles to keep the water out. Do I need to treat those ahead of time?
- What about mice/critters getting into the boat?
- How can I leave the drain plugs out (in case rain water gets in), and keep pests out?
- I've heard that Steel Wool in the hole will work. Thoughts?
- Should I support the cover somehow beyond the poles and straps to help with a snow load?
- I'm in Louisville, KY and we don't get a lot of snow, and it's not very often, however we've had "sudden" storms come up every few years that will dump a foot on us overnight.
- Maybe leave the tube blown up in the bow?
- Anything I'm missing before I decide to park my prized toy in a gravel lot outdoors?
If we're comfortable with storing it here this winter, we might make it a permanent thing moving forward. It's free storage, and we can use the space in the garage for other stuff beyond my car. Of course if we upgrade we would have to make this decision anyway. For some reason I'm super nervous to put our mostly pristine boat out in a gravel lot and let it sit, despite being here literally 5/7 days a week to check on it.
