Presents
Book Launch: January 2026
Stay tuned…
Introduction
It’s hard to cook without a recipe. Combine some random ingredients, and you might create something palatable. But more likely, you’ll ruin the dinner party.
The same holds true for boat maintenance. Take a haphazard approach, and you might keep her afloat. But more likely, you’ll wreck the ship.
Boat owners intuitively appreciate the importance of maintenance. Their heads tell them it’s smart to protect their investment. Their hearts tell them it’s wise to safeguard their friends and family out on the wild sea. The will is there, but the way is missing. Like an aspiring chef, boat owners need a good recipe for boat maintenance. This book delivers that recipe. The text is organized by season and structured with checklists. The detailed narrative embedded within every checklist item provides a thorough explanation. Time estimates, supply lists, and safety precautions are included as well. Instead of a loose discussion, this book lays out a concrete maintenance schedule for any boat—new or used, big or small, sail or power.
Manuals aplenty
Plenty has been written on the subject of boat restoration and repair. Also abundant are books that provide detailed explanations on the care of individual components of a boat. In most cases, new owners have had ample opportunities to learn how to operate their boat, but no one in the industry, or in the bookstore, has showed them how to maintain her. Guidance on boat maintenance is poorly organized, scattered, incomplete, sometimes mystical and often times ineffective. The result is a boat owner who is left metaphorically, and sometimes literally, adrift.
In my 40-plus years working in yachting, I’ve learned that new boat owners are ill-prepared to develop a maintenance plan for their treasured new possession. The owner’s manual provided by the boat manufacturer presents little more than plumbing and wiring diagrams, often undecipherable by a layperson. The very basic question: “What work do I need to do this spring to get my boat ready for the upcoming summer boating season?” has gone unanswered until now.
The Four Seasons of Boat Maintenance delivers a holistic plan for the regular maintenance needs of a boat already in good working order. This is the maintenance manual that should have come with the boat, but didn’t.
Bruising breakdowns
Breakdowns bruise the morale of captain and guests alike. I recently spoke with a relatively new boat owner whose boat was suffering from considerable electrolysis damage that cut short a family holiday cruise.
“No one ever told me I needed to change my zincs,” He exclaimed. He paused momentarily. “What are my zincs, anyway?”
In this case, a bit of knowledge encouraging the routine change of a $13 sacrificial zinc anode would have saved him thousands of dollars, avoided an embarrassing breakdown, and saved a holiday.
Taking a new, heavy, and complex vessel out for a day on the water with family and friends can be justifiably nervous making. Having confidence that the boat will perform without fault helps calm those nerves. With this book, boat owners can literally check the box on boat maintenance, and by doing so, gain confidence and relief from anxiety.
A wise old salt once said, “Take care of your boat and she will take care of you.”
Ninety Percent of Seamanship is Boat Maintenance
I wrote the initial draft of this text as an employee manual to standardize best practices for the staff of Birch Marine Inc., the Boston-based marine service business I founded back in 1985. The book still serves well in that capacity today. (And could function effectively as an employee manual for other similar businesses.) I also view this text as a solid first step toward standardizing best practices across the marine industry—something that desperately needs to happen. That said, the largest intended audience for the current edition of this text is the marine industry’s treasured end-consumer: you the boat owner.
Ninety percent of seamanship is boat maintenance. Seasoned sailors agree the difference between a good day on the water and a bad one is oftentimes the crew’s ability to understand a boat’s systems and make effective repairs when troubles pop up. An understanding of onboard systems is often gained in the work of maintaining them. Adhering to an appropriate maintenance routine will reduce the likelihood of trouble cropping up. It will also help the informed captain troubleshoot, manage, and even solve problems when they do present at sea.
Boatyard or DIY
Some boat owners like to personally attend to all their boat’s maintenance needs. For such owners, guidance on the what, how, when, and why of the work is provided in the expanded checklists in these pages.
Other boat owners prefer to delegate some or all of that work to professional boat maintenance providers. For this owner, defining the project will be a necessary first step when hiring a marine pro. “Commissioning a boat for the season” means different things to different people. Instead of asking to have your boat commissioned, it would be better to ask to have it commissioned using a specific worklist. The checklists in this book can be those worklists. A detailed plan will keep everyone on the same page and will provide the boat pros with the level of specificity they need for price quoting.
Once the work is underway, it’s helpful for the boat owner to have a solid understanding of the basics of each project when discussing work progress and complications with the individuals who were hired to do the work. The item-by-item narrative provided within will enable those productive discussions.
Layout
I have chosen to focus on the boat that lives in a climate that lends itself to boat use in the summer and boat storage in the winter. Acknowledging that boats do live in other latitudes and are used in other ways, I have also dedicated a chapter to the care of boats that live in warmer climates, another to ocean-voyaging boats, and another to the care of liveaboard boats tethered to a single homeport. Maintenance schedules for a boat in Boston, a boat in Miami, and a boat crossing the Indian Ocean have much in common, but there are some differences, which I highlight in these chapters.
Hour estimates for most of the maintenance tasks listed in this book have been provided. To do so, I had to make a few assumptions:
Respect
Properly caring for a boat as a way to show respect for the people who designed and built her is a theme that I return to regularly. Satisfied sailors come to know their vessel as a bespoke sculpture. They are keen to feel a connection to the boat and to the community of designers, builders, and fellow owners united around the brand. Fulfilling their responsibility for boat maintenance is one way to be an active member in that community. I understand and emphasize this concept as a way to find meaning in the work. I hope when the reader turns the last page in this book, they will consider boat maintenance more of a philosophy than a task.
My late father-in-law, Dan, was a priest. He had a favorite saying: “There are many ways to the one true God.” I like to riff on that theme by stating, “There are many ways to the well-maintained boat.” In these pages, I present one approach—my approach—for boat maintenance. I freely admit that there are other good strategies for tackling this work that differ from mine. Some boat pros, I am sure, have figured out techniques and strategies that are, in many instances, superior to mine. I will not tell you that my way is the only way to maintain a boat. What I will tell you is that my approach has been developed over a 40+ year career and has stood up to the test of time and thousands of sea miles. My approach might not be the only way to maintain a boat, but it is a good way to maintain a boat.
Entire books have been written on subjects that I cover in bullet points in these pages. My goal is to provide an outline of a holistic approach to boat care. Many details, debates, alternatives, and theories have been intentionally left out. In the age of Google and YouTube, a plethora of information and instruction is available to anyone at any time in any place. The challenge is knowing what to search for. The steps laid out here will serve as a guide for an internet journey in search of deeper knowledge, should that be desired.
A great boat maintenance product can significantly reduce the labor component of a project. Many companies make excellent products. I have mentioned my favorites whenever possible in these pages. Competing products are also worthy of your consideration.
A labor estimate is the culmination of much guesswork. The numbers I provide may look precise but end up being far from it. Boats and their systems vary to such a significant extent that my best time estimate will not be accurate for every project, worker, and boat.
Multiplying my time estimates by a labor rate will provide ballpark cost estimates for the boat owner who decides to delegate the work to professionals. $200/hour is a good multiplier. This labor rate is a bit high for many places, but the bump up will likely cover the cost of supplies in addition to the labor costs.
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Table of Contents
Introduction
Fall Boat Decommissioning and Winterization Checklist
Summer Boat Care Checklists
Spring Boat Commissioning Checklist
The Boat Plan
Winter Boat Work Checklists
The Low-Latitude Boat
The Ocean-Voyaging Boat
The Homeport Liveaboard Boat
Boat Spare Parts List
Tests
Acknowledgements
About the Author
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Work on this project is nearing completion, stay tuned for a January 2026 book launch.
View and print the PDF checklists from the book
