Mercury Report
Mice may look cute in cartoons, but there’s nothing amusing about rodents taking up residence in a boat.
Rodents – and mice in particular – may seem harmless enough, but make no mistake: Just a few of them, left unchecked for any amount of time, can do substantial damage to your boat. Aside from leaving the unsanitary and unpleasant presence of droppings and urine, rodents can chew through cushions and carpet, gnaw the insulation off wiring and build nests in the hardest-to-reach places. And if one of these critters happens to expire in one of the dozens of tiny voids under the deck, the powerful odor can last for weeks or months.
Fortunately, a little prevention goes a long way toward helping you avoid such nightmare scenarios. In this Mercury Quick Tip video, we’ll show you a few simple techniques for making your boat as inhospitable as possible to rodents. All it takes is a few inexpensive items that you can find at any grocery or big box store.
Shopping list:
First, take a few plastic bags and place a handful of mothballs in each of them. Put the bags – unsealed – in various spots around the boat where mice might be tempted to nest or hide. Think tackle compartments, console, battery compartment, etc. If the boat is being stored for the winter you can even put one under the engine cowl, as long as you place it in such a way that you will be certain to remove it before operation.
Mercury Report
It seems that as long as sailors have sailed the Seven Seas, they have held superstitious beliefs about things that could bring bad luck to a ship. Today, many boaters still follow these superstitions – such as not renaming a boat – without even knowing where they came from. Here are the origins of five common boating superstitions.