Boat Necessities and “Nice-to-Haves” for the Boating Season


With the first warm days of late winter, boaters start thinking about getting themselves and the boat ready for the new boating season. We can hardly wait, it’s been a long cold winter and we’re craving freedom, water, and sunshine. Just think in a couple of months we can be cruising down the river and forget about the cold,dreary winter and how difficult this year has proven to be.

My husband is already making plans for getting the motor mounted on the boat and getting the finishing touches completed. As for me, I’m getting all the necessary supplies ready to go on board, and he’s making noises about not taking the whole house on the boat. I don’t mind roughing it a little bit, but it’s nice to have fluffy towels and pretty dishes aboard the boat. He keeps making comments such as “why don’t I just weld a trailer hitch on the house and we’ll tow it behind us”,that aside, he enjoys having home cooked meals aboard, which means pots and pans and silverware, so I tend to tune his complaints out, and continue packing the necessary items that make out time aboard our boat so pleasant and enjoyable.

That reminds me,he needs a new windbreaker for those chilly and windy days, and cool evenings which are inevitable on the Muskingum River. I want some new accessories for my iPod, so that I can listen to my music and read, while he’s fishing. He also mentioned that he would like to have a GPS, it’s important to have the precise coordinates for the area he was fishing in and almost caught the “big one”,correct me if I’m wrong, but don’t fish swim around a bit, or is that just the way a wife would think? Oh well, I won’t try to approach fishing with feminine logic, I’ll just buy him the GPS and smile to myself. Who knows maybe we will have some fresh fish for supper after all.

He’s also hinting that he’d like to have a VHF radio to call ahead to the lock-keeper that we’re on our way, which they also appreciate, so they can set the lock up for us to enter, which also makes their job easier and also gets us down the river quicker. I’ll keep the VHF radio in mind for his birthday, which would be a really nice surprise for him.

We’ll both need new boat shoes, the ones we wore last year have certainly have seen their better days, and are ready to be downgraded to garden use or to wear when we’re mowing the lawn on Thursday nights. We try to get everything around the house done during the week so we’re ready to head to the Muskingum River and see all our friends on Friday afternoon,and have more quality downtime.

When we were remodeling and rebuilding the houseboat, we opted to remove the small electric refrigerator that came with it, mainly because we don’t spend a lot of time at the marina and it required shore power or running a generator when we were out. So I’ll probably need to purchase an additional cooler for our food. I’ll need to remember to add that to my “boat” list. My list keeps growing along with the anticipation of being back on the water.

Oops, I almost forgot, we’re going to need additional fenders for the houseboat. We’ve put so much work, effort and money into this boat, we want to protect our investment from damages incurred from the docks, lock walls, or rubbing against other boats when we raft off. The list keeps growing and growing, but a responsible boat owner must be prepared for another safe and hopefully memorable boating season.

Posted by blog.houseboatodyssey1.com at 3/5/2009 4:16 PM
Categories: Buying Tips, Boating, Accessories
Tags: coolers vhf radio boating iPod fish finders gps accessories boats
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