Haul-Out & Winterisation Record PDF
What the Slings Show & What Spring Must Undo

Thirty seconds of hose and the best inspection of the year is gone for twelve months.

Fouling, anode wastage, cutless bearing play, propeller condition, gelcoat blistering — all of it exists for about ten minutes, while she hangs wet in the slings. Almost nobody writes it down. By the time the lance has been over her, it is a memory, and a memory does not compare to last year.

That is the first half of this record. The second half is the one that destroys engines.

The line you closed in autumn and never reopened

Winterisation is not a hard job. It is a job with a long tail, done in the cold, by somebody thinking about going home. The failure mode is never the thing done badly — it is the thing done and never reversed.

A seacock closed. An impeller removed. An isolator switched off. A vent taped over. None of them announce themselves, all of them look exactly like a boat that is ready, and every one of them has ruined somebody's May.

So Part III is a paired register: thirty-six rows, each carrying the autumn operation and its spring counterpart side by side, with two dates and two signatures. A row with an autumn date and no spring date stays visibly open. Model W1 counts them, and it has to reach one hundred before you start the engine.

What you receive

A 21-page interactive haul-out, lay-up and recommissioning record

• An 18-line specification page — what your manuals require, each with the document and its revision
• A 20-observation survey for the slings, with a measured column and a photo reference, to be filled in wet and before the wash
• 36 paired rows across every system, autumn on the left and spring on the right
• 16 lines on the yard — contract, cradle, cover, ventilation, mast storage, and the policy clause that covers a vessel ashore
• 16 lines of work done, quoted and deferred
• 6 calculation models, and two files — A4 and US Letter, both fillable, both print-ready

Why there is no procedure anywhere in it

You will not find a concentration, a temperature, a torque, a quantity or a sequence of operations in these pages. What your engine, gearbox, heads, watermaker and heating require comes from their makers, in the revision of the manual that matches your serial number.

A procedure printed in a general document and applied to a system it was never written for is worse than no procedure, because it carries the appearance of authority. The operation column in Part III is blank. You write what your documentation says.

Two single observations turned into a trend

Anode wastage — measured the same way, on the same anode, in the same position, season after season. We publish no acceptable figure: a year that doubles is telling you something about the berth, the bonding or a neighbour's boat, and it is the change that carries the information.

Fouling rate — your own score, on a scale you define once in Part I and never change, divided by days in the water since the last antifouling. Two seasons tell you whether the coating is holding. Three tell you whether the berth has changed.

And the winter, costed

Days out of the water, the cost per day ashore, and the total value of the work you decided not to do this winter. That last figure is the one every spring forgets until it reappears as a failure. All three carry straight into the Annual Running Cost Model.

Who it is for

• Owners who lay up ashore and recommission themselves
• Anyone who has started an engine in spring with a seacock still shut
• Owners who want the lift-out inspection their surveyor would want
• Anyone arguing with a yard or an insurer about what the boat looked like in the slings

Technical specification

What it is not

This record publishes no procedure. It names no product, states no antifreeze concentration or dilution, no temperature, no torque, no quantity and no interval, and it prescribes no sequence of operations.

What your systems require for lay-up and recommissioning comes from their makers; what your vessel requires ashore is a matter for your yard and your insurer. Nothing here is training, and it is not a substitute for a qualified engineer or for a survey.

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2026 Edition · Revision 1.0 · AML-OWN-2026-02. Apex Marine Labs designs the organisational process behind good seamanship. Our documents record and organise; they do not replace a manufacturer's manual, a qualified engineer, or a survey.