2016 boat, gray and white furniture, kept under a mooring cover all summer at the dock. august was wet here, we had rain nine days out of fourteen at one stretch, and i pulled the cover last weekend to a smell and then to black speckling down every seam and a solid gray fuzz on the underside of the two seat lids at the stern.
the vinyl itself still looks decent where it is flat. it is the stitching and the little valley next to the piping that is black.
my brother in law says a spray bottle of bleach and water fixes it and he has been telling me that for ten years. something about that has always sounded wrong. what do people actually use, and is there anything i should keep away from it. this is 2,400 dollars of furniture if it has to be redone and i would rather learn from your mistakes than mine.
before anybody tells you what to scrub with, look at why it grew. a mooring cover pulled down tight over a wet boat in august is a terrarium. no air moves, the deck stays damp, the sun heats it to ninety inside, and the mildew has everything it wants.
two vent poles under the cover so it peaks and the water runs off instead of ponding, and one of the little solar vents in the cover if yours has a zipper you can put one in. i leave two of the seat lids propped an inch on a block of wood as well. mine went from a green smell every july to none in about one season of doing that.
if the boat is on a lift you can also just not use the mooring cover on a sunny week. a canopy over the top does the same job and lets air through the sides.
your brother in law is giving you 1985 advice. bleach on marine vinyl does three things people do not see until later: it eats the polyester thread in the seams, so the stitching lets go a year or two after and the panel opens up along the piping. it strips the anti mildew topcoat the vinyl came with, so the next bloom is worse and comes faster. and on a printed or two tone seat it pulls the color out unevenly and you cannot put it back.
what we use in the shop, in this order:
soap and water and a soft brush first, most of what looks like mildew is dirt with mildew living in it.
a marine vinyl cleaner made for the job, worked in with a brush that has bristles like a toothbrush, let it sit the number of minutes it says and not longer.
rinse it properly. leftover cleaner in a seam is food for the next round.
a vinyl protectant with UV in it once it is dry, twice a season. no armor style shine products, they leave a film that grabs dirt and they make the seat slick enough that a kid slides off it.
a magic eraser will take a stain off and it will also take the grain and the print off with it, so if you use one, use it on a spot nobody looks at first.
and the part people miss. if it smells and the black keeps coming back in the same spot, the mildew is not in the vinyl, it is in the foam and in the plywood base under it. pull one seat and push on the base with your thumb. wet plywood on a seat base is a two hour fix now and a rebuilt seat later.
reading this as a guy shopping for his first boat. there is one on a lot near me, good price, and the seats have exactly the black speckling wanda is describing plus one lid that is stained darker than the rest.
is that a walk away, or is it a bargaining chip. how do i tell from a parking lot whether it is a saturday with a brush or two grand of new furniture.
bill_at_the_marina wrotepull one seat and push on the base with your thumb. wet plywood on a seat base is a two hour fix now and a rebuilt seat later.
the port stern lid gave under my thumb like a sponge. so that was the smell, not the vinyl at all. took the cushion off, the base was 3/4 plywood and the back four inches of it was dark and soft where water had been sitting in the corner of the box for who knows how many summers. cut a new piece, sealed the edges, stapled the cover back on with a borrowed pneumatic stapler. thirty one dollars of plywood.
the seams came about 90 percent clean with the marine cleaner and a nail brush, two passes, and the second pass got more than the first. two of the deepest spots by the piping are still gray and i have made peace with them. protectant went on last week before i pulled everything for winter.
kevin, ask to lift every lid and press on every base. the speckling is nothing. soft plywood and a stain that spreads out from a corner is somebody's water leak.
the care sheet for my brand is on the builder's site at benningtonmarine.com and it says the same thing bill did about bleach, which was satisfying to show my brother in law.
winter storage note since the boats are all coming out now. the loose cushions and the back rests come home with me and stand on edge in the garage, never stacked flat and never in a plastic tote. a tote with one damp cushion in it in november is a science experiment by april.
the fixed seats i leave on the boat with the lids propped open on a paint stick and a couple of those bucket style moisture absorbers on the deck. shrink wrap with no vent is how you get a boat that smells like a basement in the spring, and i have owned one of those.
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