Mobile Meth Lab? Nope! It’s Mother Jones, prepped for storage. FYI – it’s real hard to take non-blurry, low-light photos on a boat, even in a calm slip

After 4,000nm and 2 years out of the US, we’re back in our home state of Texas. After an exhaustive search into the safest possible place to store Mother Jones on the Texas coast while we work (200 miles away) in Austin during hurricane season, we are super happy she is tucked away in her new home – 3 miles up a winding waterway, behind a 60 foot flood gate on a floating dock- at the Freeport Municipal Marina.

And, tucked away she is!

It’s actually a ton of work to properly prep a boat for storage – and even more work to prep a boat for an oncoming storm. It’s something commuter cruisers do every season before they leave their boat for whatever their commuting to. But, fortunately we never had to do it, before now.

Luckily, the good folks over at Windtraveler and Zero to Cruising each published lists of what they do to “de-commission” their boats. This gave us a HUGE head start on our boat storage prep (thanks, y’all!). Of course, every boat and its conditions is different (their boats are both on the hard and out of the hurricane zone). So, I used their info as a guide to create this this master list of “how to prepare Mother Jones for storage and storms”.

who me? merge a bunch of lists into one giant, coded spreadsheet? yes. what can I say, it’s a gift.

You might be wondering “do you really have to do all this stuff?”. Maybe, maybe not. What you “have to” do depends on you, your boat, your climate and what condition you like to keep your boat in. We’ve decided to take a fairly comprehensive, conservative approach to storing Mother Jones given our boat (aka our home) is in a new environment, in the hurricane zone and we’re not around to check on her on a daily basis (we do visit every few weeks for a long weekend as a pre-caution* and as a retreat).

It’s worth noting we’ve opted to use damp-rid instead of using an electric de-humidifier because I’m more afraid of fire than I am of mold. And, instead of hauling stuff back and forth on our weekend trips, we’ve elected to keep a small amount cooking of staples onboard the boat (olive oil, spices, popcorn, etc) which could tempt pests and science-experiments.

Finally, while I once thought we’d prep Mother Jones like a Cat-5 storm was rolling in tomorrow (because I like to “set it and forget it”), we smart’d up and realized this isn’t necessary, it’s a lot of extra work for a “just in case” scenario and getting all that extra line, etc is expensive! So, in terms of everything extra we’d need to do prep the boat for a major storm, we figure we’ll just cross that bridge if and when we come to it.

of course, I did include and code those items on the master list “just in case”

Speaking of which, “just in case” you’ve got any items for the master list we should be considering or tips for using your boat as a commuter cruiser vs. a live-aboard, please do get in touch!

*Sure, Mother Jones is probably fine on her own. But, things change and break on boats. While living aboard does add wear to systems, it also provides an awesome opportunity to notice when small things are leaking/rusting/problematic before they become a BIG problem (if you’re around, you’ll notice “it” needs work). think: a small leak onto a mattress, which flows unchecked, in a closed up boat when it’s 100 degrees outside with 90% humidity for 2+ weeks before you’re around to notice. or worse . . . That’s a huge reason we prepped this well and come check on her. Plus, we love running to the coast and hanging on her every chance we get!