Wintering in the (Frozen) Water!

[Justin Lee]

I am leaving my 32-3 in the water over the winter this year for the first time. This is a fresh-water lake in Northern Utah & it normally freezes completely over by about mid-January. We have about 12 boats staying in this winter & have installed several "Bubblers" to keep the area where the boats are ice free. I have one thing I can't come up with a good solution for yet...wondering if anyone else has come up with any good ideas? I have a "dripless" shaft log installed & am a little concerned about ice building up inside the "bellows". I have some "heat-tapes" installed around the thru-hulls & wonder if I should do the same around the bellows?

Any thoughts here!

Justin Lee
Gravitystorm
1985 E32-III #635

 

[Emerald]

Hi,


If the bubbler does it's job and can keep up with your cold weather, it should be moving "warm" water up around the boat that doesn't freeze, and hopefully that would keep the water in/around the shaft log from freezing also. That said, I don't deal with as much cold as you do.


The other thought is how thick does the ice form if you don't have the bubbler/ edges that freeze around bubbler area? Thinking that this thickness is an indicator of how far below the water surface you'd have to be to be below a hard freeze point. Not a good thought though.


Whish these thoughts were worth more than what you payed for them


-David
Indpendence 31
Emerald

 

[Ernest]

Well Justin, I think we're in the same boat (pun). We are also in the water for the winter on the Hudson River in NY and we've already been down into the teens at night. I checked the boat on Thurs and the bellows had not frozen. In fact I have never heard of any of these dripless things freezing when a bubbler is in use. It's at least a foot under the water line and we do not usually get ice a foot thick. Of course there is always a first time! Ernie Schlesinger

 

[NateHanson]

I'm not sure the position of your bellows relative to the water line will matter much since it's almost directly exposed to the 15 degree air inside your boat. I would be a bit concerned about that.

I have to admit, though, that I'm generally nervous about keeping a boat in freezing water for the winter. We did it once, and I think there's a lot that can go wrong. Granted I'm a bit of a worrier. My nightmare scenario is the water in the cockpit drain hoses (the only seacocks that should be open) could freeze and split the hose, flooding the boat. To make maters worse, the bilgepump is almost certainly frozen solid, and if it isn't, it will run slower than normal at 10 degrees. We addressed that by heating the compartment (under the companionway) where our bilge pumps were mounted. We still had trouble with them, but they were at least somewhat operational.