Seaworthy Tip of the Month - Birds and the Bees and Flapper Valves

By Bob Adriance, Editor, Seaworthy Damage Avoidance Newsletter

It won’t be long before spring arrives and boatyards are again filled with the happy sounds of electric sanders, boatyard hoists and chirping birds. Boat owners make boatyard sounds to get their boats ready for launching. Birds make chirping sounds to attract other birds, which eventually means - wink, wink - baby birds.

All of this would only be of passing interest, were it not for the fact that expectant birds tend to build nests. Just what goes on in their tiny brains when they look for places to build nests isn’t clear, but last year two BoatU.S. insured members at the same marina on the Eastern Shore of Maryland discovered birds had built nests way up in their boat’s exhaust tailpipes. Unfortunately for both the members and the birds, the nests weren’t discovered until the exhausts had mysteriously overheated and burned the exhaust system’s insulation and hose. A surveyor who examined one of the boats said the blocked system, left undiscovered, could easily have started a fire.

Rather than flapper valves, both of the boats had exhaust system tailpipes that turned down 90° at the transom. Both boats were also being kept on boat lifts. It seems likely that birds won’t build nests in exhaust pipes that are too close to ground or water, but boats stored way up on storage racks with the same tailpipe configuration are probably equally as vulnerable.

As a sort of epilogue to all of this, a surveyor told Seaworthy about a third exhaust system at the Eastern Shore marina with a bird’s nest that was discovered last spring by the boat owner’s wife. The boat, the wife decreed, could not be launched until the babies had grown up and flown away. This was in the spring, right at the start of the boating and fishing season. From the time a bird lays its eggs until the babies grow up and fly away can take up to six loooong weeks.

The lesson? If your boat doesn’t have flapper valves you’d better cover your tailpipe before the birds start chirping.

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