Mice during winter storage

For your sake, I hope you haven't lived through this, but if you have, I need your advice.

I got my mod 2 out of winter storage (a friend's barn) today and found the biggest mouse nest I've ever seen in the cuddy. I'd left old socks full of mothballs in the cockpit and the rest of the box of mothballs in the cuddy, but it didn't deter the beggars. The mice had actually chewed up the moth-ball containing socks and used them for building the nest! The smell when I opened the cuddy cover was simply indescribable.

Anyway, the cloth cuddy cover still stinks after 6 washings and is soaking in disinfectant as I type. I expect that I will be building a hatch door sometime soon. All the lines etc. that I had stored inside the cuddy and cover smell too and will need to be replaced, as will the wooden paddle that had absorbed.......well, never mind.

The question for this group is how to get the smell out of the hiking straps and cloth boat cover. Both are physically undamaged and don't seem to have absorbed anything liquid, they've just been exposed to the odor for up to six months. Obviously, I've hosed both off thoroughly several times, but you can still smell the straps from 5 feet away and the cover from 2.

I'm I condemned to spend hundreds replacing these things or is there a way to get them clean?

Thanks!

Gordon

My first thought would be marinating those straps and cover with some Febreze. Unload the whole bottle if you have to. That should neutralize the odor.

Good luck.

Of mice and boats, the continuing saga

Well folks, if you're wondering how things turned out.......

After repeated washings with every cleaning agent in the house, the cloth cuddy cover will probably be useable. The real key was a product called Atmosklear that claims to kill urine odors on contact. Between this stuff and multiple washings, the cuddy cover, hiking straps and center-board rope are useable.

The boat cover is still hanging over the garden fence. The Atmosklear stuff is $10 per bottle, and they're small bottles, so I'm going to try just leaving the cover out in the elements for a week, or until the neighbors complain. It's supposed to rain for the next three days. I'll spray on a little ammonia too. The odor killer stuff says it works against acidic odors, including urine. Ammonia is cheaper and surely doesn't smell any worse than what I'm trying to remove! I don't have anything large enough to soak the entire cover in, and if I bring it into the house and try to soak it in the laundry sink or the bath-tub it is a safe bet that my wife will kill me.

I've been giving the lines that were stored in the cuddy the same treatment, but I think they're toast. The bungies are little enough trouble to replace, but the reefing lines, while not terribly expensive, are a pain to whip because they're so thin. I'm kind of bummed to have to replace those.

There's still a smell coming out of the center-board slot, but I expect that once I get her on the water and sluice a few buckets of worth of Lake Mendota (which has an odor all its own! ) down there, that will take care of itself.

I lost one good day's sailing yesterday thanks to all this. I'll use one of this week's rainy days to get over to West Marine and buy the lines I need to replace.

In the immortal words of Top Cat (a 70's cartoon character for those of you under 30) "I hates meeses......to pieces"!

Gordon

Smell Removal

Gordon,

I have had good results in the past using an ozone generator to get rid of mildew and cigarette smoke from vehicles. Try putting the lines and cover in the cuddy with the ozone generator and cover the hole with plastic sheeting.

Ian