Boat Cleanliness

kiloil

kiloil

Member
Sep 15, 2013
191
Tallahassee, Florida
Boat Info
2015 25' SLX 8.2L-SOLD
Engines
BOATLESS
I don't know how you guys do it, but I seem to find I over clean all aspects of the boat. I enjoy the boat tremendously but If I had larger boats like most of you do, it would be a full time job (and lots of Prozac) . With the smaller boats that are dry storage, what do you guys do when you anchor out on water? Do you continually to clean it or just wait for the season to end then detail it?
 
When it is a labor of love, it isn't work; it is fun.

I can sit still and be nice for only so long, so a bottle of polish and a rag are always nearby and used every day for a while. If I need to get cool in the summer, I jump in and when I do, I'm carrying a boat brush and boats soap, or XXX acid to clean the waterline. As far as washing the boat is concerned, in my area on the NW Fla coast, washing the boat is really easier than with a bow rider. Once a week, I get on the bow with a bottle of boat soap, a soft boat brush and the hose (no bucket) and I wash from the bow back, one side at a time.....takes me less than 30 minutes, but I don't fool around - I wash the boat. Every day we use the boat, she is sprayed down with freshwater from the top of the antennae to the waterline....takes 10 minutes. One of the benefits of a clean boat is that the polish/wax lasts a lot longer.

I cannot stand to see my boat dirty, so I couldn't even consider waiting a month for a clean-up, much less a year.
 
Frank, I am very close to what you describe. I can't stand my boat dirty and will not take it out until I wash it. We stay out for up to 5 days on the hook and I try to get up in the morning and wipe the boat down while there is dew on it. This makes it so much easier to keep on top of it without too much real effort. I also carry a bottle of spray wax that I hit areas exposed to the sun a lot with and when in the water, scrub brush for the bottom and wipe down the boot stripe. On trip I wiped the boot stripe on about 4 boats because it drove me nuts to see these beautiful boats with funky boot stripes.

The central vac takes care of gnats and bugs from the night before very well. A damp towel works best for the top of the canvas that picks up dust and tree funk. Yes, it is a disease...
 
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Stay on top of it and it and it's not overwhelming. My wife is always asking me, "Can't you just relax?" To which I reply, "This is relaxing!"

BTW, OCD knows no LOA boundaries.

Pay no attention to the black streaks in my sig pic. They are a thing of the past.
 
I'm with Frank on this one, same regimen and love to do it. I'm not very mechanical, but dam anal about my skiff being clean as heck lol.....ok gotta go wash the boat, b back later....hehe
 
Hello my name is Kevin and I have a clean boat ODC problem. They say this condition doesn't get better and others around you learn to cope with it. I don't think I really have a problem. I can handle this and I can stop at any time I want.
 
A clean boat is a happy boat. A clean motor is a happy motor. We keep our boat spotless. It is not only a OCD type of thing it also does a couple of other things. 1. It keeps the value at the top of chart for a given size and year. 2. It also is a pride thing when you pull up to a dock and strangers ask if your boat is brand new.

Quick little story from last week. I am in my engine room once a week as well. It is said around our dock that you can eat off of anything in my ER. We also never have clogs in the vacuflush. Except last weekend somehow we had a clog. So I determined that the clog was at the last bend going into the tank. So I removed the last fitting going into the tank and set the fitting and hose off to the side a little above the tank. While I was cleaning out the clog the hose slipped down and raw sewage dumped into my bildge. I was pi$$ed, b!tch!ng every cuss word in the book. My engine room had raw sewage in it! My friends knew it and gave me sh!t the rest of the day.
 
One other thing. A clean engine room makes it real obvious right away when something is not right.
 
This time of year my 23 footer gets wrecked every time I use it. On Lake Erie the boat stays clean the boat goes from the trailer to a dock but on the smaller lakes and the Ohio river we tight line the boat with in 10 foot of shore so dirt gets tracked into the boat from shore and being that close to shore the boat gets a mud line. The river and small lakes are all stirred up because of high water conditions.
 
I guess I'm a bit OCD with boat cleaning too. Keep after it, at least one section every time we're out, and it never gets to be a big task. And I wipe the hull down after every outing; to me this is one of the best things you can do to maintain the shine. I see a lot of people hosing the hull with freshwater after a day out, but at our marina, and I'm sure most, hose water is well water, and it's hard, so if you don't wipe it down, you've got hard water spots. I hate hard water spots...
 
We use our boat year around for trips and a lot of fishing & crabbing in salt water when we come in to the dock I've started spraying it down with salt away boat, canvas & eisenglass it's indoor stored when the marina pulls the boat they power wash and hand brush the whole boat from rub rail down, and flush the engine with salt away. It gets a good cleaning about twice a month we bought it to use as a pleasure & fishing boat it gets detailed when we have the time I gave up on worrying about a little mess till I can get to it. We put more hours on it than most boaters over 800 engine hours in 3 years.
 
ZZ13 said:
One other thing. A clean engine room makes it real obvious right away when something is not right.
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Completely agree.... whether you call it the bilge, engine room or whatever....it needs to the spotless. This is the easiest way to tell if something is wrong.

fwebster said:
I can sit still and be nice for only so long, so a bottle of polish and a rag are always nearby and used every day for a while....I cannot stand to see my boat dirty, so I couldn't even consider waiting a month for a clean-up, much less a year.
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HUMPH said:
Frank, I am very close to what you describe. I can't stand my boat dirty and will not take it out until I wash it.
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Like Frank and Ken said, I can't stand to see my boat dirty and won't take it out unless it's clean. Whether it's my current sport boat or my previous 280...size does not matter.

My neighbor was watching me wash my boat the other day and he said, "You know, you don't need to wash something that's not dirty..." I said, it's never dirty because I always keep it clean.
 
Gary Hill said:
Yes it does!!!!!
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I'll third that! It is really a labor of love. I just got done and I am ready to go back and do it again. I even went and painted the pulleys, hydraulic lifts for the hatch and re-lettered the intake plenums. I cleaned each plug wire individually! I placed white oil soaking pads under the engines and transmissions even though they don't leak, just to catch a leak very early on. I find that on a nice day it is very relaxing to clean and toil in the engine room with a nice beverage in the shade of the engine hatch.

--Mike
 
Holy smoke you guys!!!!!!!! I thought I had a bad case of boatcleanitis until I read this thread. I only Swiffer my engine down ONCE a month. Ya'll probably think I'm a slob don't ya's?
 
I was on anchor for two weeks once in Block Island (loved it!)..

I washed the boat twice by standing in my dink with a boat brush and bucket of suds, while stretching the fresh water wash down from the cockpit to rinse it off.

Others look on in disbelief and kept their distance from the crazy guy over there...
 
Count me among the guys who rarely cleans the boat. I let my kids eat on it. The dog is big stinky and sheds and hangs out. We go to the beach and track sand in it. A few times a season, we fill buckets from the lake with soapy water and brush it all to the bilge. Don't look in my bilge. The boat has has never been waxed. For me, boating is about fun, not work.
 
A clean boat is a happy boat!
This +1.
Magic Eraser is my best friend. Works great on fiberglass for ALL marks.
 
HMMM I think I am slowly moving over to Smile Maker's camp. But my boat stays pretty clean. Interior has to be clean as we use it on weekends. But my topsides are tough to keep up with as I have some heavy oxidation on the bow that makes things difficult. Thus the oxidation adds to the black streaks on the hull, that is my OCD item and drives me nuts. Like Frank when anchored out I will grab the polish and go after them!!

But my wife does say I see more dirt on the boat then I do at home, so I must have some of that OCD issue you all talk about!!!!
 
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