Boat Cover Tips
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Covering Your Boat is the First Step
If you are already covering your boat, good for you! You are already doing one of the single most important things to protect your investment, and you deserve a pat on the back. However, there may still be a few things you haven’t taken into account that can help to prolong both the life of the cover and your boat. Here are some boat cover tips that will help you do just that.
Using Boat Cover Tie Downs
Tying your boat cover down is important not just for trailering, but also for storage. Of course you want to tie the cover down when you are driving down the road, but it also makes a lot of good sense to tie it down when it’s sitting in the water, or even on a trailer in your yard. We have received too many phone calls from people who didn’t bother to tie their cover down and had to re-order a new one (they figured that would be easier than fishing the cover out of the bottom of the lake for a second time). No matter how tight your boat cover fits, it’s never a bad idea to anchor it to your vessel.
When you secure the cover to the boat, you are not only ensuring that it will be there the next time you come to use your boat, you are also helping to decrease the likelihood of water pooling on it. The quickest way to degrade a material is to let water sit on it. When you use our tie down kit (for storage on a trailer) or our suction cup tie downs (for mooring) you are making sure the boat cover is pulled down on the sides so that it’s not drooping into the middle, creating pockets and collecting water. Tying down your cover is the first and most important thing you can do to extend the life of your cover, and therefore your boat.
Supporting Your Cover
Supporting your boat cover is the second most important thing to do to help make sure it lasts as long as it should. A properly cared for and supported cover can easily outlast its warranty! Tying your cover down is great, but supporting it really goes hand in hand with tying it down. When you both support and tie the cover down, you can create a nice tented effect, which will help to make sure water runs off the cover efficiently. As we said earlier, water pooling on your cover will only degrade the material, and no one wants to have to replace their cover because of something that could have been easily avoided.
You can support your boat cover in a number of ways, depending on the layout of your boat. The most important type of boat to use supports for would be a pontoon, simply because there isn’t a lot sticking up above the rails. Bass boats come with built in supports- pedestal seats! Just leave your seats up and fold the backs down. Boats like center consoles will already be somewhat supported because of the console’s height. With any type of boat, purchasing (or crafting your own) supports can never hurt. A boat cover support system or boat cover support pole is an easy way to offer your cover support and help it last for years to come.
Reinforcing Your Cover
Another way to help make sure your boat cover has a nice, long life is to reinforce it at any sharp points. Windshields can sometimes have very pointy edges, especially on older boats. Reinforcing your cover with extra material in those places can make a world of difference in its strength. Even though our materials are extremely tear resistant, they can still be punctured by a sharp object. Our reinforcement kit is a very thick and durable vinyl material which has an adhesive backing, allowing you to easily cut it to size, peel the backing off, and place it on the inside of the cover wherever the reinforcement is needed. Many of our covers already come reinforced, but not all.
Yet another option for big areas with very sharp corners, like windshields, would be to pad the area with something. Our customers have shared with us a few items they have used, but the best one we have heard of is swimming noodles. A swimming noodle (cut on one side horizontally to allow it to sit on top of the windshield) can be cut to size and placed around the windshield to offer padding throughout the whole width of the windshield. There is no need to allow your cover to be damaged by something sharp on your boat when it can be so easily prevented- be sure to reinforce your cover around your sharp edges so you don’t end up having to repair it.
If You Don’t Already Have a Cover….
You know what’s coming next- if you aren’t already covering your boat, you should be. Covering your boat gives you a ton of benefits, the main one being protecting it. There are of course other reasons to cover your boat, such as cutting down on cleaning time and preserving your boat’s value, whether you are planning on selling it one day or passing it on to your family.
Boat Covers Direct wants to see your boat looking clean and pristine, so you can enjoy it- because isn’t that what boating is all about?! If you need some of the accessories we have mentioned in the above post, or anything else our website has to offer, just call us. We are happy to offer you a discount for mentioning this post. Happy Boating!