photo courtesy of BOATING

How to Wax Your Boat

I repeatedly am asked and always advise everyone to wax their boat at least once a year.

But how can you  do that if it's sitting on the trailer? Is it OK to skip the parts covered by the bunks?

Yes, it is OK. It's most important to wax the sides and deck to protect them from hazing, color fading and chalking from the sun. Some people think waxing the bottom makes it go faster, but experienced performance boaters know a waxed bottom makes surface tension greater and increases drag. I just finished waxing my boat with a $25 Ryobi orbital buffer and a $20 bottle of Star Brite Cleaner Wax with PTEF. It took about 90 minutes, with time left to do the wife's truck.

Keeping Your Boat Forever Young

 Based on an article in Boating

You can't give your boat hair plugs, Botox injections, or liposuction, but you can give it a face-lift. Want to float Mom's Mink in the Fountain of Youth?

Here's a list of dos and taboos that will shave years off your boat's appearance and prevent premature aging.

MAINTAIN A YOUTHFUL APPEARANCE

Bald Ain't Beautiful. Think of canvas, clear plastics, and vinyl as your boat's hair. Without it, your boat will look older than it is. Make your boat look years younger by replacing all of its canvas and cushions.

Wax to the Max. Keep your boat's skin-its gel coat-looking young. How? Start with a double coat of wax every spring; this is your boat's sunscreen, which will protect its skin and make contaminants wash away easily. Follow up with thorough washdowns after every outing-use a boat soap that contains carnauba wax for extra shine. If the gel coat looks old, chalky, and dingy, rejuvenate it with an anti-oxidation agent such as Meguiar's #49 heavy-duty oxidation remover ($13). Yellow water stains and discoloration can be removed with Davis FSR stain remover ($13;. If your colored gel coat is screaming for rejuvenation, contact the manufacturer and ask what brand of gel coat was used and if it can be helped. In many cases, colored gel coat can be wet-sanded until it shines like new, but some brands will just be harmed more if you hit them with sandpaper.

There's the Rub. Replace your boat's rubrail insert to get rid of its scuff marks. This job is simpler than you'd think. A hair dryer can be used to heat most rubberized rubrails. As they become flexible, they easily pop out of their slots. A new insert can then be pushed into place.

Hit the Deck. The older your boat's deck is, the more it cracks, and these cracks show a boat's true age. Spiff it up by coating the deck with a liner, such as Rhino Hide's Flexible Tuff Hide II ($159/50 sq.ft.; www.rhinohide.com). We used this stuff to rebuild an old Boating project boat, and the liner looked better than the boat's original gray-and-white speckle finish. Plus, the coating contains rubberized beads that make a surface completely nonslip.

AVOID PREMATURE AGING

Burn Baby Burn. The sun isn't the only thing that causes skin damage-caustic cleaners or products containing bleach age gel coat fast. Minimize the use of these cleaners. If you must use them, make sure you rinse your boat well afterward.

Cowl Abuse. Sitting an engine's cowl on the ground upside-down is the number one mistake made by outboard owners. Even on wooden dock planking, the cowl's finish will get scratched or scuffed, instantly aging it.

Cloudy Vision. Clear plastic curtains and windscreens can also dull with age, which will be worsened if you use ammonia-based glass cleaners on them.

Easy Does It. Abrasion makes any boat look old, too. The main culprit is that innocent-looking scrub brush. Using a stiff-bristle brush on glossy surfaces, such as gel coat, outboard finish paints, and vinyl decals, will eventually scrub their gloss away. Use a soft-bristled brush, sponge, or rag to clean anything aboard your boat that's smooth and shiny.

A navigational hazard is pretty clearly defined as something you might hit on the water. A "hazard to navigation," however, could very well be the person at the helm. Insurance claims files show that one of the most expensive claims — as well as one that frequently causes significant injuries — is when a boat hits something while underway. Investigations show that these incidents are almost always avoidable simply by using some common sense and exercising some basic skills.

It was a sunny, calm day with unlimited visibility, a buoy was hit.  How did that happen? The answer, according to the owner and skipper, was "his new polarized sunglasses." He was looking at his navigational display, and the polarized lenses of his sunglasses made the screen difficult to read. With his focus distracted, he hit the buoy.

Forget the fact that the buoy was bright red and dead ahead for a mile or so as he approached. Strange things happen on the water, right? Sure, but this incident got me thinking that not all navigational hazards are outside the boat. The more I see helms filled with an array of gadgets, the more I harken back to the good old days when we had a compass, perhaps a depth sounder, and a knot meter. The simple helm — most of today's wonderful technology had yet to be invented — forced us to focus. It made us keep a proper lookout. It made us plan ahead.

Today we may plan our day out on the water the day before, on the computer at home, plug in waypoints, arrive at the boat, push some buttons, and off we go. This, I think, is where the story of "hazards to navigation" begins.

Have you ever punched in directions on your car's GPS, hit "go," then diligently steered the route the machine on your dashboard is dictating to you? Had you paused and thought it through, you might know a better way to get there, right? Well, your boat's navigation equipment can also only do so much of the thinking for you. Consider that jetty inconveniently located between your position and the mark inside the harbor? The penalty for not paying attention and preparing properly may result in you running hard aground on the jetty — or worse.

Technology can only take you so far. You, skipper, need to know what your boat is and isn't capable of. Is your vessel, to put it in legal terms, fit for its intended voyage? Is your boat suited to navigating offshore? How much rough weather can your boat handle? Are you GPS- and radar-equipped?

One thing obvious to people in my line of work is that the primary cause of most, if not all, accidents involving collisions (hitting something moving) and allisions (hitting something stationary) is human error, poor decision-making, and complacency.

Impeller Fails

Ever wonder what goes on inside your raw-water pump?

Most people don't. A surveyor friend of mine sent us some pictures.

The first shows a brand-new impeller. One thing you might notice is how squished the vanes are. When your boat's not used much, say over winter, these poor things stay folded over for months. After a while, they take a "set," which means they stay a little bent over like most of us would if we'd been hunched over for a whole season. This makes the pump a little less efficient, and every year, it pumps less water.

The other picture shows what happens when you ignore your impeller too long. Those poor vanes finally gave up and broke off. Actually, you'd be fortunate if they just broke off; what usually happens is that they get carried downstream in the cooling system, where they can clog your heat exchanger, or if you don't have one, clog the cooling passages in your engine. Either way, it can be a big job to retrieve them, and retrieve them you will — otherwise you'll be fighting overheating problems forever.

This season, replace your impeller(s) if they're over a couple of years old. It's one less thing you'll have to worry about.

YOU ARE ENJOYING A PEACEFUL DAY WHEN SUDDENLY DISASTER STRIKES

It' s a good idea to make sure you have these handy.

Whistle

Rescue situations after natural disasters are typically chaotic affairs, with quickly-assembled teams doing their best under difficult circumstances. You can't always depend on visual identification in this kind of scenario, which is why survival experts insist that any disaster kit contain a safety whistle. Yelling for help can leave the average person hoarse after just a few minutes. A well-constructed whistle, however, can be blown for as long as you can normally breathe and heard for far greater distances. Many safety whistles also produce unique staccato sounds designed to be heard over helicopters and other loud engines.

Water

Drinkable water is one of the most important resources to have after a disaster. While many people recommend setting aside several gallons of bottled water, long-term survival might require something a little bigger. 

WHAT IS IT AND WHAT'S THE CONNECTION TO STONEHENGE?

it's when the northern hemisphere of the Earth is most inclined towards the sun, and that's why we get the most daylight of the year.

During the winter solstice, the northern hemisphere is tilted furthest away from the sun, hence fewer hours of daylight and the shortest day.

The word solstice is derived from the Latin words sol (sun) and sistere (to stand still), because the seasonal movement of the Sun's path (as seen from Earth) momentarily comes to a stop before reversing direction.

In the northern hemisphere, the summer solstice takes place between June 20 and 22. This year it's on Wednesday, June 21 .

In London, on the summer solstice, the sun will rise at 04:43 and set at 21:21.

Near Stonehenge in Salisbury, sunrise will be at 04:52 and sunset will occur at 21:26.

Why Stonehenge?

Stonehenge is an ancient prehistoric site, which may have been a place of worship and celebration at the time of summer solstice for thousands of years.

The giant stones are believed to have stood in the same spot since 3,000 to 2,000 BC, and are positioned to align with the sunrise on the two annual solstices.

If you stand in just the right place inside the Stonehenge monument on the day of the summer solstice, you will see the sun rise directly above the Heel Stone, which stands just outside the circle to the north-east.

Every year, thousands flock to the English Heritage site to witness the spectacle. White cloaked and hooded druids among the standing stones to welcome the first rays of the sunlight.