Cleaning Your Boat

     Or, I Didn’t Even Know It Was That Dirty!

Boats get dirtier than houses and apartments do, and faster than other homes do. I’m sorry to tell you this, but it’s true. You don’t climb around on the roof of your house and then walk into your living room with bird poop on the soles of your shoes. I don’t even know where all the dirt comes from, but it particularly gathers right inside the companionway entrance. Boats have many odd cracks and crevices inside, and they seem to come embedded with some kind of dirt magnet.

To reduce your interior cleaning, keep the outside of your boat clean. You might as well have the best cleaner you can for the job, because gelcoat stains easily, and around here, birds seem to find that entertaining. We are soon entering blackbird season here, and that means boat-cleaning season, because blackbirds love to eat some kind of dark berry that does not change color between entering and exiting said blackbird.

And, they love to flock at marinas. I have no idea why, but when I had my first boat at Gulfport Municipal Marina, I was so excited. I was going to scrub it, and then wax it, a two-day job. So I scrubbed that boat and got every bit of bird poop off. I came back the next day with the wax – but went back to scrubbing. There wasn’t any time to do any waxing by the time I was done. The same thing happened the third and fourth day.

The fifth day, I came back with a couple of tarps from Wal-Mart, and I tarped that boat. Bird poop comes off the aluminum side of a tarp with a hose, much much more easily than it comes off a boat’s surface. Within a week, five boats in the marina were similarly tarped.

Where I am now, we aren’t mobbed by blackbirds – thank goodness! But the boat still needs to be cleaned often. A friend recommended Barkeeper’s Friend, a non-abrasive powder that does an excellent job of getting stains, including rust, off the surface of a boat. Sometimes you have to use it several times, but if you keep coming back to it, you’re going to get all the stains out. It will also clean anything else on the boat. Barkeeper’s Friend is very cheap and a little goes a long way.

Barkeeper’s Friend has now come out with a new product, in a spray bottle. The liquid is very thick, and as with the powder, a little goes a long way. I found the old liquid Barkeeper’s Friend unsatisfactory, but this new spray, with a spray nozzle and the word “MORE” across its front, is outstanding.

 I used it on the PfiferTex netting around my cockpit, scrubbing both sides with a stiff brush and rinsing thoroughly with a hose, and it came out looking brand-new. It also gets green algae out of fabric (it was appearing on the zippers and in the Sunbrella Bimini). Always test in an inconspicuous place first, but I’ve never found it to fade or stain anything.

Get yourself some Barkeeper’s Friend, both the powder (which is not in a waterproof can) and the spray. You’ll find that you use it for many tasks.

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