Covid has extended the time far beyond that when we should have been reunited with our boats in far away or not so far away places. What disasters await us after about two years of neglect?

Perhaps the best advice would be to make sure you have a copy of Nigel Calder's boat maintenance handbook. However despite its encyclopaedic contents there are many traps for the unwary.

I am no great expert in the field but I have plenty of experience restoring much neglected yachts. Most of which had been left alone between four to five years.
Of course you will hope that the boatyard has “kept an eye on things”. I would not hold my breath.
I am hoping to call on the experience of the OCC membership to help compile the most frequent problems and the DIY solutions.
I will start by listing a few of the almost inevitable problems that occur even if your boat was put to bed properly.

• Flat batteries, are they dead beyond recovery ?How would the fact be established? What treatments have been found to be successful?
• Seized skin fittings, it is usually the lot in hot places, freeing them without breaking the levers or snapping the screw thread is an art form. Inspecting the outside of a valve is no indication of the horrors of what might have happened to its innards.
• Stinking marine toilets together with bilges and polluted water tanks will exercise some lateral thinking in restoring sweetness.
• Water in the fuel, or horror of horrors a rampant fuel bug might well ruin your day.
• The life raft is out of date. Did you weigh it when it came back form its latest service so that you can now monitor the gas content of the cylinder? How else can this be done?
• The list is endless, and professional solutions expensive.
• Leaks of all sorts are highly probable.

Perhaps our pooled knowledge of these and similar problems will be of benefit to others.


Yours, Noel Dilly