Boats come in all different shapes and sizes, and can be made from a variety of materials, but nothing quite compares to the romance and nostalgia of a wooden boat.
However, while owning one can be a privilege and a joy, wooden boats do require a certain amount of care and maintenance in order to keep them looking good and performing well, all year round. Treating the wood with a product like Owatrol Deks Olje D1 Wood Oil can certainly go a long way to protecting a wooden boat, but there are other things you can do to preserve it, too:
Keep it as dry as possible at all times
Keeping any wooden item dry can be essential to its longevity and effectiveness, and while rotting wood in the home might be easy to spot, it can be trickier to detect on a wooden boat.
One way of helping protect your boat from the perils of moisture, is to keep a close eye on any parts of the boat that are wet and exposed to the air. While it’s absolutely possible to maintain a wooden boat while in the water, without it rotting, it can be a different story when it comes to the boat bilge. That combination of ventilation and water can lead to problems, and to prevent this, you should remove any water from the bilge and do your best to dry it off.
Maintain cleanliness
It may be a constant struggle to keep your wooden boat free from debris, dust and general muck, but failure to do so may result in it attracting moisture, which ultimately, can lead to a much bigger and far more time consuming problem than regular cleaning: rot.
To ensure your wooden boat never develops a problem with rot, always use a cleaning product designed specifically for the job, and clean it as often as is possible.
Paint it
While painting and/or varnishing a wooden boat in a colour of your choice is of course a fantastic way of making it look more attractive, it is also an effective way of protecting the wood. For any wooden boat to be as rot-resistant as is humanly possible, it’s necessary to paint or varnish its exterior with a quality product designed especially for marine equipment. That said, it’s important that you pay close attention to maintenance once the wood has been painted or varnished though, as exposure to the sun can cause it to crack. This in turn, can lead to fissures; a much bigger problem for any wooden boat owner to contend with.
Always use the best quality marine paints and cleaners you can afford, as while they may cost a little more, they will undoubtedly go further to protecting your precious wooden boat, for longer.
Addressing rot
Should you notice at any time that your wooden boat has begun to develop rot, there are various kits you can buy from specialist sellers that use a capillary action in the wooden parts of the boat that are dry, to get deep down into the fibers and help it restore some its former strength.
Owning a wooden boat can be a wonderful thing, but without due care and attention – such as keeping it clean and dry and painted – it can quickly begin to deteriorate and no longer be fit for purpose.
