Fifty tips for a boat to survive winter

Offshore coach Stuart Greenfield offers his advice on how to keep a raceboat in top condition through a UK winter:

Weather is rarely what breaks a raceboat over the winter. The damage comes from a boat left in an undefined state: half laid up, half in use, with a seacock nobody can account for, a battery someone took home, and an engine run for five minutes in January “to keep it sweet” and then left full of raw water.

A raceboat makes this worse. The equipment that makes her quick is the equipment that least likes being left damp, loaded or exposed for months. A good laminate sail can be ruined in its bag. An instrument system can lose the calibration that took a season to earn. A teaspoon of trapped water can split a valve body and let in a great deal more.

So the owner’s job is three things. Put the boat into a defined winter state. Write down everything that changed. Keep checking that state until spring. – Full report