How to Store a Canoe

Video Transcript

"It’s important to store your canoe correctly, whether you’re storing it for a week or a longer period of time in order to extend the life of the canoe and the other gear, the airbags and all that. First thing you want to do, no matter how long you’re storing it for is to deflate the airbags, at least a little bit. If you’re just storing it for short period of time, you can leave the airbags in the boat, but make sure that they’re nice and loose, and that they’re not, not stored very, not still blow up very tightly, if they are blown up and it gets warmer, the airbags may over inflate and they may pop, or they, you may have a hole in them. And once they have a hole in them, they’re pretty hard to repair. The other thing you want to do if you’re storing for a longer term, is to loosen screws that go through wooden elements, because during the winter those wooden elements and the other parts of the canoe may expand or contract at different rates and depending on the rates that they expand or contract at they may actually crack and we have seen some boats that have cracked as a result of being stored with screws tight over the winter. Finally, when, you want to make sure you get all the water out of the boat and a good way to store them is on top of a pair of sawhorses, you can just put the boat on top of the sawhorses, turn it upside down, mark sure that it stays nice and dry, keep it out of the UV, uh, storing it in the sunlight will eventually break down a lot of components of the boat, certainly will do some damage to the float bags and even though Royal-x is UV protected because of the vinyl on the outside it’s still a better idea to store these under cover where they’re not going to get a lot of UV. So if you store your boat properly it’ll last you for a long time. "