Morning Folks:

Here in the (freqently frozen) Milwaukee, WI area, it almost time to put my cats (H-16 & H-18 Magnum) into (outside) winter storage.

Before I consign myself to boat-less sailor status, I have two questions: what has been your experience storing Hobie sails in sailboxes over the winter....when the temps get below zero (I am particularly concerned about the plastic windows crazing or cracking); second, given that I want my hulls to stay dry....on the inside, any experience in drilling out old inspection ports (and then putting a cupped cover on them) to allow the hulls to B R E A T H E.

All comments appreciated.

Paul

Milwaukee

I store my boat under a cover, but outside. Once everything is dry, I release the tension on the battens and leave the sail stored in its tube on the trailer. As for the hulls, once they're dry inside, I leave the access ports in place and just pull the hull plugs.

We break the boat down to trailer it, so it spends winter outside on the trailer. We do have hull-covers tough, so it's protected against the worst. Inspection ports are left off (hulls are upside down and inside the hullcovers, so no worries there).

Sails are mostly stored in the trailer box, but only if it's really dry. If the box is moist, we take the sails home and store them in the attic instead. I dont think they will be damaged in the box even if they are somewhat moist, but why take the risk?
We always take battens out of the pockets before putting them in storage, as we have had some battens resemble screwdrivers in the spring..