Time Savers

Remember the steps from the winterization article, and that winterization is different than the annual maintenance? Knowing that and what's involved with each will open up new flexibility in using your boat throughout the winter. That's because after you've performed the annual maintenance and many of the winterization tasks like adding antifreeze to the heater and ballasts, all that's left is draining the engine and other parts of their water. And this can be REALLY easy and quick with the right prep work done.

Make sure you've read through your boat owner's manual to identify all of the drain points for your boat during winterization. For our example boat, the 2019 Nautique wake boat with PCN EX343 engine and PCM Power-Plus v-drive transmission, this includes these eight drain points...

- One knock sensor and drain port on each side of the engine block

- One drain port on each exhaust manifold

- Drain port on the rear of the engine for the thermostat housing

- Drain port on the front of the v-drive transmission

- Drain port or remove hose from the oil cooler

- Unscrew and drain the raw water strainer bowl

Most of these drain points involve removing a brass plug, letting the water drain out, and replacing the brass plug. It's important that water drain out from each location or there may be something blocking the drain port that needs to be cleared.

On this boat, most of these locations are fairly easy to reach. But even so, steps were taken to make the job even easier. These same steps can be taken on boats where the drain ports are difficult to reach. You can replace the brass plugs with brass shutoff valves so that it's as simple as flipping a lever to drain the engine. And if it's still hard to reach, you can pipe and run a hose to somewhere more convenient to place the valve. It's just important that whatever modifications you do that you're always able to confirm that water indeed drained out of the engine. Any water left inside the engine during the winter can lead to freezing and severe damage to the engine or other parts.

Having a quick and easy solution to draining your boat's engine will make it much easier to use your boat throughout the winter on warmer days. And boats like to be run much more than they like to sit around. So make it easy on yourself!

Oil changes are probably the single most important task you can do to prolong the life of your boat and keep it running smoothly all year long. But who likes the mess of changing oil, particularly when the boat may be parked over the water and next to your beautiful dock. There's a very easy step you can take to make this task extremely easy and quick to perform.

Most inboard engines will have a rubber hose attached to the bottom of the engine where the oil is drained. This hose is meant to be routed through the bottom of the hull through the drain plug so that oil can pour into a container that you place under the boat.

A simple modification is to instead connect that hose to a battery-operated oil extraction pump. And an even more effective step is to permanently mount that pump inside the engine compartment and permanently connect that hose to it and add a ball valve.

Here's a link to an oil extraction pump...

https://amzn.to/3nZjRoc

Adding these small parts will make oil changes as simple as bringing an empty milk gallon container, flipping a valve and turning on the pump to drain the old oil from the boat. This will make it more likely that you'll keep up with your maintenance on time and make the overall job much easier, cleaner and quicker.