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Hello, this is Ben with Ben’s pest control. And it’s time for another one of our Ben’s pest control podcasts. And today I want to do an episode about boats. Now we’re here in Florida and there are a lot of boats. I don’t know I use the term a lot and it just seems like it’s it’s an understatement. You go anywhere in our area, whether it’s Stewart, Jensen Beach, Fort Pierce, Vero Beach, there appear to be boats everywhere, you go to any of the boat ramps, or by any the beaches on the weekends, and the boats on the water are just immense. Now, boats, just like a house can end up with pest control problems. And their pest control problems can almost be exactly the same as any home gets. If not, in some cases, they’re amplified. So I’m going to give you an example. I got a call last week to go out and look at a boat on the water in Fort Pierce. And it was a sailboat and the owners had Roach infestation, and they happen to live on the boat. And so I went out to take a look and I searched the whole boat. And they had had a company come in before us and based on what I saw, it looked like the company had done a pretty good job. Most of the cubby holes and areas where they stored food and dishes and around their stove. There were no signs of roaches and I saw in places like where the battery compartment was they had baits out where they had treated and for the most part, the boat appeared to be in good shape. So strangely enough after looking at the sailboat, I had to tell the gentleman one of the problems is that you have an area where this sailboat had just a ton of storage places. And I’m sure the storage places are very needed on a sailboat. But those storage places all are areas that things like roaches can hide in. And in one case, he was able to show me underneath and we could actually see down into what I’m gonna refer to as the hull of the boat. And I was like, Man, you’ve got water under this boat and I asked to ask him if water was getting in and he said no, the sailboat was supposedly completely sealed. He believed his water heater had a slight leak, and that the bilge pump would pump that water out. And I was like, Okay, well, I said if you have moisture, that’s a situation that’s going to be very conducive to you having roaches on the boat. Anyways, long story short, I kind of went over his options. And I told him that in his case, I wasn’t sure that there was a ton more that we could do that his other company hadn’t already done because I wasn’t seeing any areas that look like they missed trading. And so we got into it we started talking about the possibility of having his boat fumigated. Now for a lot of people, fumigation, whether you realize this or not fumigation on boats is actually done quite a bit. boats like a house can get dry wood termites, and it is not uncommon for them to fumigate. And I’ve heard from fumigators and I am a licensed fumigator have never really done a lot of it, that they actually like fumigating boats because the water underneath makes a great seal, that the gas does not permeate into the water. So the bottom of the boat is completely sealed from the gas leaving. And so they just have to put their tarps over the boat and shoot the gas into the boat. And usually they’re good to go. But after talking to the gentleman for a while, and then as I was leaving another boat owner stopped me to talk to me. I said to the boat owner, I said well, you know, do you have roaches? And the guy said, Oh, yeah. And next thing I know I’m like okay, well what do you mean by Oh, yeah. And he said the whole Marina was infested with roaches. And I’m like, okay, so I said, Well, what do you mean by a fest? He’s like, Well, you go outside of your boat at night after it’s dark. The roaches are on the dock. They’re on the pilings. He said even up where the driveway is he said there’s the Marina has bathrooms you go into the bathroom, the roaches are everywhere. And so I had to go back to the first boat owner and say you know this is a very real part of your problem and you may never completely stop the roaches on your boat if the area around your boat that your boat is tied to and dock that the roaches are that bad.
And then the boat owner said oh yeah,
they are pretty bad here. And I’m like, Okay, well, there’s the first problem is how do you ever expect to keep them off the boat? See if the area around it is just crawling with them. So anyways, to get back to this, I left him with his options for treatment. The gentleman was very appreciative, I not sure what he decided to do, because as I explained to him if the doc is loaded, who knows if you’re ever going to completely keep them off your boat. So that’s just one example of boats and pest control. Now, as I was leaving one of the other owners I spoke to said he had a rat in his boat. And that’s also very common rats love areas near water, they can very easily crossed the dock line to get onto boats, it is not uncommon to find rats and boats. So there are lots of people who have had to hire pest control companies to come out to try to get the rats off their boats. And ironically, this gentleman said the wall that he had in his boat there, the rat had chewed through the wall and wagged, climbed up into the wall, and they weren’t sure if they ever even got the rat out, they said they stopped hearing the noise, but they never caught the rat. And that’s another example of something that can happen with boats and pest control. ran into another lady as I was leaving, who was the first person I met with was talking to, and found out that at one point, she had dry wood termites on her boat. And they had eaten a section of wood that was around a door. And so in her case, they just ripped out the wood and replaced the wood around the door. But I had to say, you know, if the dry wood termites have spread any other part of the boat that you can’t get at and physically remove the wood, she may have to have her boat treated. So she understood.
And that’s just another example of something else that the boats can get. Which is just like any other house, one of the things that you don’t normally see on a boat, is subterranean termites, because subterranean termites are underground termites, and the boat is on water. Now, as I say that I have had boats that have been stored on dry land and been less in storage for a long time that subterranean termites have gotten in. And there have been some cases where subterranean termites have flown into a boat swarmed in and found moisture sources that are ample enough to actually try to sustain and start a colony on the boat. So it’s not impossible, it’s a little less likely, unless the boat stored on land that you would get subterranean termites. But it is it is possible that it can happen. Especially if there’s a moisture source and there’s some dirt or ground that’s built up some nesting material that they can they can find the nest in. Another thing that can happen with boats is spiders. It is very common to see a lot of spiders associated with boats. A lot of boats leave lights on at night, and the lights are going to draw bugs. And if the bugs are there, the little gnats and the mosquitoes come, the spiders are going to be more than happy to be there and get their free meal. I know in my experience with pest control, there are some areas and some markets, I was talking to a pest control guy up in Tennessee where they have a lot of lakes. He’d spent his whole summer treating boat, what I’m gonna call covered boat docks, he said the spiders get absolutely terrible in the boat docks. And then what happens is the people come out and they want to get on their boat, but the boat is loaded with spiders, and then they’re afraid to take the boat out. So he goes out houses on his lakes once a month and he treats they’re covered boat docks Hill, treat the boats if that’s what they want. And he’ll sweep down all the spider webs in the covered boat docks. So spiders just like most homeowners get, definitely find a place to live and thrive in boats. So that was my experience. That’s what I’ve seen with boats. That’s what I know. And if I have witnessed that can happen. What I would tell you is if you have a boat and you are interested in one of our free 58 Point pest surveys, please give us a call at 772-878-1972 and we’ll be happy to come out and give you an inspection our boats a little different for our 58 points because our 58 Point Inspection is mostly designed for structures on land. But it doesn’t mean that we can’t take a look at it and deem what’s relevant to the boat situation and make sure that we’re sharing that information with you. All right, thank you and I hope you have a great day.
