Life in salt water, especially in the tropics, is hard on a boat. But overall, the better we are about maintenance, the fewer “challenges” we have while we’re out cruising and just wanting to enjoy. So the first of every month is preventative maintenance time aboard Winterlude. It’s routine stuff, like checking and supplementing our wet cell Trojan T-105 batteries’ water when necessary, topping off transmission fluid and doing the salad dressing routine in the head.
We also have a monthly “fire drill” — it’s not a real fire drill, but since we added the stainless safety bars to our hatches, we want to insure the come OUT easily in case of fire. Keep in mind, the fabricator that built our arch originally refused to fabricate hatch safety bars saying more boats have fires than are ever robbed. So we unlock the locks and literally take the bars off their hatch frames monthly to insure that they’ll come out easily in case of an emergency (the keys to the locks are just below each hatch in the little holder for the floorboard “keys”).
Obviously items on a monthly maintenance checklist will be incorporated into a Caretaker’s checklist for while you leave the boat.
And just as obviously, everyone’s monthly maintenance checklist will be different. I think the important thing is that you have one … and here’s ours if you want to use it as a starting point.
Winterlude’s Monthly Maintenance Checklist – click here for the PDF!
Do you have other items to add to the monthly maintenance checklist? Leave a comment and I’ll add it to the checklist! Cheers! Jan
Thank you
Does the lemon oil stain the white areas?
Hi George! I’m a bit confused. There is no lemon oil in our monthly maintenance routine. But if you’re asking about my inside teak maintenance, no, the lemon oil doesn’t stain the white areas. Of course, I’m fairly careful to keep it only on the teak. Let me know if I didn’t answer your question. Cheers! Jan
Just new to the post and may have responded to the wrong thread. Yes I am grappling with using Amazon’s Brazilian lemon oil on my inside teak because my wife is sensitive to the VOC s and I would love to use lemon oil for many reasons but am concerned that a residual of oil on my white painted surfaces may be a problem
Hi George! I would test it first on a small painted area out of the way. We just use plain old lemon oil, whatever is available in WalMart, currently “Old English Lemon Oil”. Nothing fancy. We don’t have any painted areas – the headliner is some white 1980’s vinyl and the cabin sides look to be come type of white laminate, but I’ve never had a problem. Good luck!