Written by Boaters Newsletter Staff

By mid-August, your boat has probably settled into a comfortable routine. The spring commissioning list is long forgotten, the first few trips of the season are well behind you, and weekends on the water have become just that — routine.

Maybe you’ve spent the summer fishing, cruising, pulling the kids on a tube, or bouncing between the dock and your favorite anchorage. Hopefully, everything has worked exactly as it should.

And that’s precisely why now is a good time to take a closer look.

Boats have a way of hiding small problems until they become expensive ones. A loose electrical connection can still conduct electricity. A nicked propeller can still push the boat. A weakening battery can still start the engine — until the morning it doesn’t.

After several months of heat, vibration, salt, sun, fuel and regular use, your boat deserves more than the usual glance around before you turn the key. You don’t need to spend an entire weekend performing maintenance, but a deliberate mid-season inspection can uncover problems while they’re still relatively simple to fix.

Start at the Prop

There’s a good chance you haven’t looked closely at your propeller since the boat went into the water. Now is a good time.

Small dings, bent blade edges and other damage can create vibration that isn’t always immediately noticeable from the helm. That vibration isn’t limited to the propeller; it can travel through the drivetrain and put unnecessary stress on components farther upstream.

If you have an outboard or sterndrive, look behind the prop as well. Fishing line wrapped around the propeller shaft is surprisingly common, and left there long enough, it can damage the shaft seal and potentially allow water into the gearcase.

You don’t have to remember hitting something dramatic to have a problem. A seemingly harmless encounter with a floating branch, sandbar or discarded fishing line can be enough to leave something behind that’s worth addressing.

Open Things You Normally Leave Closed

For inboards and sterndrives, opening the engine hatch shouldn’t be reserved for the moment something goes wrong. Take a few minutes before starting the engines and really look around.

A clean bilge can tell you a great deal about what’s happening aboard your boat. New oil, coolant or fuel where there wasn’t any before deserves attention. Check hoses and belts for chafing or cracking, look at clamps and connections, and pay particular attention to anything that simply looks different than it did earlier in the season.

Outboard owners should occasionally remove the cowling and perform the same kind of visual inspection.

You’re not necessarily looking for a particular failure. You’re looking for change.

Experienced boat owners become familiar with what their machinery normally looks, smells and sounds like. A new stain, an unfamiliar smell or a slightly different sound can sometimes identify a developing problem long before an instrument or alarm does.

Give Your Batteries Some Attention

Marine batteries live a difficult life. They’re subjected to heat, vibration, periods of heavy demand and sometimes long stretches between charging. Add chartplotters, pumps, stereos, refrigeration, lighting and all the other electrical equipment aboard a modern boat, and the battery system may be working considerably harder than you realize.

Inspect the terminals for corrosion and make sure the connections are secure. If your batteries allow access to electrolyte levels, check them according to the manufacturer’s recommendations. If you have a battery monitor, compare current performance with what you were seeing earlier in the season.

Also pay attention to slower-than-normal cranking. It’s easy to dismiss when the engine still starts, but batteries rarely choose a convenient morning to announce that they’re finished.

Check the Fuel System

Mid-season is also a good time to inspect everything between the fuel fill and the engine.

Look at accessible fuel lines for deterioration, cracking or chafe, and check connections and clamps. If your boat has a fuel/water separator, inspect or service it according to the engine manufacturer’s recommended schedule.

Water and fuel have never been particularly good boating companions, and neither are clogged filters. An engine that begins hesitating, losing RPM or struggling under load may be telling you something long before it stops running entirely.

Don’t ignore a subtle change in performance simply because the engine still starts and gets you away from the dock.

Don’t Assume the Bilge Pump Works

Bilge pumps are one of those pieces of equipment that receive very little attention until they’re desperately needed.

Test them.

Don’t simply flip the dashboard switch and listen for the motor. Check the automatic float switch or sensor as well, and make sure debris isn’t restricting the pump or pickup.

While you’re there, take a good look around the bilge. Finding some water aboard many boats isn’t necessarily unusual. Finding substantially more water than you normally see is.

The important question isn’t simply, Is there water? It’s where did it come from?

A few extra minutes spent finding the answer at the dock is preferable to discovering it when the pump is struggling to keep up.

Pay Attention to Steering

Steering systems tend to deteriorate gradually, which makes small changes surprisingly easy to overlook.

Think about how the wheel feels now compared with the beginning of the season. Has it become slightly harder to turn? Is there more play? Does the boat respond differently when turning in one direction than the other?

Inspect accessible hydraulic steering components and hoses for signs of leakage, chafing or damage, and check the steering hardware at the engine or drive.

Small changes in steering deserve attention. This isn’t a system you want choosing the entrance to a crowded harbor or a difficult docking maneuver to finally become a big problem.

Take a Look at Your Anodes

Sacrificial anodes are supposed to disappear. That’s their job.

But there’s a difference between an anode doing its job and one that has already done most of it.

Inspect accessible anodes on your engine, drive, trim tabs, shafts and other underwater hardware. If they’re significantly deteriorated, don’t automatically assume they’ll make it until haul-out.

Replacing an inexpensive anode in August is considerably easier than replacing the underwater metal it was intended to protect later.

Walk Around the Boat With Your Hands

One of the most effective inspection tools aboard a boat doesn’t come from a toolbox.

Use your hands.

Grab the bow rail. Push against stanchions. Check cleats. Move seats. Open hatches. Feel hinges and latches. Boats vibrate, fasteners loosen, and something that was rock-solid in May can develop just enough movement by August to warrant attention.

While you’re walking the deck, inspect dock lines, fenders and anchor gear. Look particularly closely at lines anywhere they repeatedly contact a cleat, chock or piling.

A dock line doesn’t usually fail because it suddenly became weak. More often, it fails because it spent months slowly wearing through in exactly the same place.

If You Trailer, Inspect That Too

If your boat lives on a trailer, remember that the trailer has been working just as hard as the boat — and depending on how far you travel, possibly harder.

Check tire pressure and tread condition, but don’t stop there. Look closely at the sidewalls for cracking and inspect the tires for unusual wear. Check wheel bearings, lights, safety chains, the winch strap or cable and the coupler.

And take a look at the spare.

A beautifully inflated spare tire that hasn’t moved in eight years isn’t necessarily the insurance policy it appears to be.

Trailer problems also have an unfortunate habit of revealing themselves beside the highway rather than conveniently in your driveway.

Reset the Safety Gear

At the beginning of the season, most responsible boaters go through their safety equipment. Then summer happens.

Life jackets get used and moved around. Flares get relocated. Fire extinguishers disappear behind gear. First-aid kits get opened. Flashlights lose batteries. Things that were neatly organized in May may be scattered around the boat by August.

Take a few minutes and reset everything.

Make sure required equipment is aboard, accessible and in serviceable condition. Check expiration dates where applicable and replace anything that has been used, damaged or depleted.

Most importantly, make sure everyone aboard knows where critical safety equipment is located. The captain shouldn’t be the only person who knows where to find it when something goes wrong.

The Best Time to Find a Problem

There’s a tendency among boat owners to think of maintenance as something that happens twice a year: commissioning in the spring and winterization in the fall.

The boat, unfortunately, doesn’t stop aging between those two dates.

In many ways, August is when your boat has the most to tell you. It has been running long enough for weak points to begin revealing themselves, but there’s still plenty of boating season left to enjoy.

So before your next trip, give yourself a few extra minutes at the dock. Open the compartments you normally leave closed. Look underneath things. Move things that aren’t supposed to move. Listen to the engine and pay attention to what has changed since the beginning of the season.

You don’t need to turn every weekend into a maintenance project. You simply need to catch the little things while they’re still little.

Because ten minutes at the dock today can be a lot cheaper than a tow home in August.