Winter Storage - Tower Up or Down

[weaselman]

Starting to get cold here in New England. Finally wrapped up winterizing my boat and it gets shrink wrapped tomorrow. For those who store their boat outside during the winter do you lower the tower and have the shrink wrap over it.

Since I have speakers mounted on the tower my thought was to lower the tower and shrink wrap over it to protect the tower and speakers from the winter snow.

Wondering what other jetboaters. Thoughts?

 

[Bluewater272]

I'm still considering whether or not to shrinkwrap my boat, but if I do I planned to do it with tower up and a zipper access door at the stern in case I wanted to crawl around and futz with stuff over the winter.

 

[McMark]

I've always left my tower up. This year I covered it with the tower down. I made a PVC support so that the weight isn't hanging on the cable stops all winter. I think I like tower up better though.

 

[bumpy]

Tower up, I use it as the main support with strapping only to the front cleats, bow, stern cleats, and stern trailer tie-downs.

 

[Mainah]

Tower up = better angle to shed snow.

Shirnk Wrapped 242

• Mainah
• Oct 31, 2017

Winterizing

 

[Hilldale]

I just dropped off my 242 to the Dealer to have it shrink wrapped. I asked this very questions since I was thinking I wanted the tower down. They told me that they shrink wrap with the Towner up because when the tower is down, there are sharp edges that will cut through the shrink wrap. I have never taken my tower down so I have not seen these sharp edges. But that is what the dealer does.

 

[2kwik4u]

Excuse my southern-ness for a minute.....But why do you guys shrink wrap instead of just put a nice cover on there? What the benefit to the wrap vs regular covering?

 

[Mainah]

When I lived in Maine I wrapped becuase of snow and ice. Snow and ice will accumulate on a normal cover until it leaks or tears from the weight. The thaw and freeze cycle is also brutal to a cover. Snow is also an insulator which causes its own problems. With the two boats I had before this I stored with a normal cover in the garage. My 242 did not fit in my garage so the one year I had it in Maine it got wrapped.

Now that I live in South Carolina I will be throwing the shipping cover on it once dry from this weekends deep cleaning and storage prep.

 

[Hilldale]

I actually have the original shipping cover which is fairly heavy duty. I was going to use that. But then I heard of too many stories of covers not sealing well and you end up with Bugs and critters in the Boat all winter. Some of which will chew on electrical wires and anything else you may store in there.