This winter we found out we had mice in our basement. We didn’t see them at first, but we found evidence that they were there by the sorted food in our Rubbermaid boxes.

We thought it was cute, they had gone through our bird seed and had neatly sorted it by type of seed and had stored it in several places. Then we found the seeds in different places, we kept on finding it everywhere. They were busy!

The decision to place live traps around the basement was made and they were carefully setup. It didn’t take long to capture the first three and they were released out in the country (don’t worry, they were released several kilometers from any house). A few days later one more was caught and then we couldn’t find any more evidence of mice. So we thought.

There’s a hole in our boat!

As everyone knows, getting a boat ready in the spring time is a lot of work. Each weekend is packed full of activities to get things ready and this weekend we were getting close and one of the activities was to put our Zodiac onto the Davits. After hauling the boat out of our basement, into our vehicle, from our vehicle to the boat, we started pumping it up. And that’s when we found more hidden seeds and the hole. For whatever reason a mouse decided to make a chew mark, just one 3mm hole. Not sure why or what it was thinking but now I’m thinking that I don’t like mice, at all.

Time to patch

After dragging the boat back home we opened up our patch kit and started fixing the hole.

  1. Cleaned the area with alcohol
  2. Traced where the patch would be applied on the boat with a pencil
  3. Applied a layer of rubber cement on both patch and boat and let dry for a few minutes. Repeated two more times.
  4. Carefully stuck patch onto the boat and pressed it hard using a spoon for leverage to remove any bubbles
  5. Waited 24 hours

Fortunately my son probably saved me a little more headache. After pushing the patch on he casually mentioned I should put a little bit of air in the pontoon. What if the patch bonded through the hole to the other side of the pontoon.

After 24 hours we pumped it up in our basement and let it sit overnight. Fortunately that was the only hole and it held perfectly.

Now I need to deflate it, pack it up and bring it back to the boat… again.

Related Posts: