All about Boats, Yachts and Sailing

Boats offer hours of pleasure to their owners and guests. Boats allow people to access parts of lakes and the coast that people without boats cannot reach. There you can picnic swim or fish in less crowded waters. If your boat is small, then storage may be simple. You just load the boat back onto your trailer and head home for storage. This gives the advantage of being able to take you boat to different lakes in order to launch it. For larger boats, storage is more of a problem and you may need to choose a marina boating.

A wet storage marina can offer many advantages. First and foremost, your boat is ready take out at a moment’s notice. Often wet storage marinas offer electrical power that allows you to keep batteries charged using a battery keeper. While most wet storage marinas do not offer covered storage for your boat, there are some, which do offer this option for smaller boats. Enclosed storage protects your boat from sunlight and many of the elements that may cause the exposed portions of your boat to break down.

Dry Boat Storage Marina also can offer many advantages to the boat owner. Boats are stored in dry conditions, usually inside a garage like structure. The structure offers protection from water damage as well as other damage from the elements. Dry storage will keep the finish and exposed upholstery of your boat looking like new for many years.

Storing your boat in a dry boat storage marina requires that the boat be lifted out of the water. Most dry boat storage marinas offer a crane and track system that allows your boat to be moved into its storage slip. Stacked storage may be offered for smaller boats, but is not practical for boats with large masts. Very large boats may not fit into the facilities offered by dry boat storage marinas.

If your plans include working on the boat while it is in storage, be sure that this option is available to you at your marina. Many marinas restrict their use to storage only. If you do have the option of working on your boat while it is in dry storage, be sure to inspect and repair the parts of your boat that are inaccessible when the boat is in the water. If you need to work on the prop, dry storage time is the perfect time for this work.

The biggest disadvantage to dry boat storage is that the boat must be moved back onto the water each time you want to take it out of storage. It will need to be lifted by crane onto the track and brought back to the water. This means scheduling the launch around the marina’s schedule. In other words, you cannot just drive down to the marina and hop into your boat anytime you wish to. Once the boat is launched it will need to be brought back to a dock to pick up passengers, supplies and luggage.

When choosing a Dry Storage Marina, remember that there are advantages as well as disadvantages to each method of storage. You should make your choice depending on what is best for your way of using your boat. Do you want the convenience of wet storage or would you prefer the security of Dry Boat Storage?