powerqrudy

ok, Moving To Tampa what do I have to do to run my Michigan boat in Flordia...Closed cooling??? what about the outdrive??? I would like to keep it in a Rack..Any Idea of where to start looking for a good marina that has rack storage??? THANK YOU RUDY

rchevelle71

iTrader: (1)

Closed cooling would be nice, but expensive, and not necessary.

What is the boat, if it were a single it may be worth it to go closed cooling, but twins=twice the price.

Just make sure it gets flushed well after every use.

As far as Marinas, I am not familiar with tampa, but I am sure someone on here is.

Offshore Addiction

tampa bayside marina near gandy and westshore or lands end marina in apollo beach are about your only choice around here unless you run over the bridges,and more extensive cleaning and maintenence is about your only option for your motor and drive other than closed cooling,and if you high and dry you'll want to flush and clean your own,they use tanks on the boats and most the tanks they lift to flush with are already full of salt water!

Organdonor

Here are a few you might be interested in.....

I would suggest leaving the boat in St. Pete or Tierra Verde, as that's where most of the pleasure boating is done anyway.

Tampa Bay Marinas

Tampa Bayside Marina

Tierra Verde Marina

Tierra Verde Resort & Marina

I would also suggest joining the OPBA. It's a great group of performance boaters in the area and your sure to have a great time.

Offshore Power Boat Association

throttleup

Welcome to the Tampa/St Pete area. There are lots of places to store your boat. Like offshoreaddiction said there are more places in St Pete than Tampa to store your boat. Plus you have better access to the Gulf. You are going to love it down here!

I agree with organdonor, join the OPBA. Great group of people, lots of boating activities and poker runs throughout the year.

Once you figure out where you are going to live then start looking for storage place.

If you want to give us a call we would be glad to help you out in finding a place here in the St Pete area to store your boat or even give you some ideas about where to live if you don't have that figured out yet.

Matt

Tim G.

Trailer it! That way you can take care of the boat. You can NOT trust the marina to flush the engines.
I flush my engines EVERY time i run the boat. And, I run descaling flush agent through the engines for the last minute before shutting them down.
Most boats have Merc sterndrives that pick the water up in the lower unit. A boat that hasn't been flushed will tend to build salt at the plastic joint where the water passes through the transom plate....not protected with closed cooling.
It really depends on what boat/engines you have.
84 Bayliner with aa 3.0? Leave it on a mooring.
'03 Top Gun with 500s? On a trailer stored in a place with a hose, near where you are.

Welcome to FL. I'm sure we'll meet up at an OPBA run this year...

WARPARTY36

If you do not have strainers, that might be a good start.

RollWithIt

How long do you normally have to flush the motor/s with fresh to really get them clean?? And what exactly does a sea strainer do?? My take is that it is a filter to keep large debris out of the motor. Yes or no?

powerqrudy

Great, now I do have a Eagle Trailer.?? I think it may rust?? ok How do I get a hold of Throttle Up??

ChrisK

Till the salt is out ... I use the taste method.. taste the water commin out.. when you no longer taste salt.. letit run a few more minutes.

The strainer just keeps out the large crap from going through the cooling system.