Thanks Jeff. We bought down in Canadian Lakes. I’m curious about your comment that even with a hoist with a canopy you still need the mooring cover to protect the interior. We spoke with a company that does a lot of dock work in the area and he said that boaters who have to cover the boat each time with a mooring cover tend to use their boats a lot less than those who have a hoist with a canopy and don’t have to mess with a mooring cover each time. I’m surprised to see that I still need to use the mooring cover even with a canopy.
Hi there!
Well…we live at our lake house in the summer full time, and most weeks use the boat 4 or 5 days per week in season. For us in our location, we still had to cover it daily with mooring cover.
In full disclosure, we could do a VERY sub-par job putting the mooring cover on when we had the canopy. We could take short cuts on no poles, and only securing the cover in a few spots just so that it would stay in place to “catch” whatever droppings fell on it from above. VS without canopy we now have to put the mooring cover on securely and properly to ALSO protect from elements.
Spiders are attracted to bugs near water. So they really congregate on the lifts/canopies (not impressive to my wife or daughter). Spider droppings were a surprising issue for us in year one. Really bad problem. Secondarily, birds occasionally liked hanging out inside the canopy cover on the support rails for shade. And then they would poop. This was constant on and off problem for us, even with us living there and using the boat full time those first two years with the lift/canopy.
Maybe Canadian lakes sees much less of those problems, or maybe the sales company/installers are blowing some sunshine your way to close a sale. For instance, our dock sales company said the same to us originally, and that is why we added the canopy to our new lift in the first place in 2017.
I did learn to raise our boat as high as I could against the underside of the canopy. That really cut down on birds significantly and helped mitigate spider droppings a little bit better. However, without putting the mooring cover on in evenings, those spider droppings would still happen quickly enough to leave little black “spots” everywhere unless that mooring cover went on at night.
FYI: originally I was thinking (and our salesman said) exactly what yours is saying now. Hence, when we bought the boat AND lift/canopy in 2017, I honestly didn’t think I was going to have to cover it very often…if at all. I was wrong.
Honestly, all of that said, canopies STILL are nice. If not for the headache and anxiousness of docking between their support arms, I’d probably have a stand alone one with our Sea Legs set up right now. With a canopy the boat AND mooring cover are protected from elements, and mooring cover is just there as a barrier between mainly spider droppings and boat. Hence, still of value. Again, my biggest dislike of the canopy is not have much room on each side for leeway when docking…tight quarters.
Bigger point is that the lift (IMO…and that probably is only worth $.02 cents) is much more important in protecting the boat by keeping it out of the water when not being used BECAUSE the mooring cover can still keep things covered from above. That’s probably my greater take away from those first few years.
Thus, if you can only fit one or the other in your budget currently, I would personally recommend the lift first. And…you can always then add the canopy later if you still feel it necessary.
Likewise, you can go canopy now, and then add the lifts later if you want. However, if you go this route you’ll have to be much more diligent on keeping pontoons clean if that matters to you for looks and performance. They get dirty and build up scum fast…and speed and performance then drops surprising quickly too. AND FYI: I am lazy and don’t want to clean my pontoons often, so that certianly impacts my view of it all.
