winter

[christinero]

Has anyone ever had a shrinkwrap enclosure build over their boat for the winter? Have heard pros and cons but am worried about are first winter in NY.Also how many BTU''s to keep my wife from not going to a hotel?

[Sailmc]

I would think the condensation would drown you! You must have proper ventilation. A shrink wrped boat would be unsuitable for habitation during the winter.

[sailorrest]

If you are going to shrink wrap anything consider the hull from the bottom on the ports to the ground. This will prevent the windchill from robing all your heat away. If you have to choose between heat and circulation, choose circulation. Ports can be sealed with bubblewrap and tape to prevent heat loss and you may consider cork or bubble wrap beneath your sleeping pad/foam/mattress.

Your BTU question requires more info on size of boat etc.

Good Luck

[eryka32]

We built a frame over the boat out of PVC pipe from hardware store, covered with a loose tent of clear plastic 6-mil dropcloth,bottom weighted down with antifreeze jugs partly full of water. This allowed some ventilation, kept the snow off, and on sunny days, we got solar gain.

If you don''t have a headliner, get the silver-sided bubble wrap and tape it to every surface above the waterline. Especially the insides of lockers (you may have to keep doors open anyway for ventilation.) The stuff is easy to work with, not messy, and easy to take down in the spring (use 60-day release masking tape).

For best results, BTUs should be provided "betweeen the sheets!" (sorry, I couldn''t resist) Seriously, if you can afford the electric, the cheaper the heater, the better. Those fan-driven ones help dry out your air. Still, keep a watch on lockers for condensation, and store any paper products in plastic bags. We lost a year''s supply of cards when the envelopes glued themselves together.

This will be our 3rd winter living aboard in the Chesapeake using this system (northern Michigan before that, but we couldn''t live on the boat during the worst of winter; lake froze solid!)

[Edel-665]

When we lived aboard, we shrinkwrapped the boat every winter. If you can find it, use the clear shrink wrap, that way you acan take advantage of the greenhouse effect.

Also put fiberglas batts down on the deck and you won''t have to worry about condensation on the headliner. One additional improvement we made on this system was to put the fiberglass into black plastic garbage bags.

We found that we often had too much heat. We Often left the door to the cover open in an attempt to ''vent'' off the extra heat we created.

All this and we were living aboard in Toronto. Jan often has a day or too when you wake up and it''s -25c outside.