Books got wet on last passage, any drying ideas?

[jhulmer]

you have to soak In fresh water to get the salt out then try this:

Place the book pages in front of a strong fan in an air condition room, as the top page dries it will flip back then the next dries and it flips back and so on.

It works but slowly.

[picklesandjesse]

Sorry to hear that. I had a long beat to weather in the Arafura Sea in a fiberglass boat and had my collection of Woodenboat magazines that I had collected for years, they were stowed safely up high on a shelf. After a few days I noticed the shelf was flooded and they had been soaking slowly for days. Was a very bad day. My introduction at the time to fiberglass boats !!! They had been safe on multiple coldmolded wooden boats before. Never saved them, although I tried.

[JPA Cate]

Hello, Ryban,

We have "dried" books in the sun, in the cockpit, but open, not closed as in your picture. It does not remove the salt, and the book will be prone to mildew thereafter. It will also require rubber bands around it to get it to close. Atoll's plan, if they are still damp, might work. Try to save them, sometimes, the greater portion is still dry inside.

Sorry this happened to you, and I hope you can replace the reference books. The downside to digital, of course, is that if that gets wet, you lose all your manuals, completely.

For the future, a few ideas:

Duct tape around the hawse pipe helps keep the top on. Jim used to use a polyethylene bag over the top of the hole, cram the cap on, and use the duct tape to seal the edge.

Since you have a wet boat, you could consider bagging books in ziplock bags, or plain plastic grocery bag "raincoats". Tools do pretty well wrapped in oil soaked rags, but don't leave them in a pile in the sun! Air tight tubs for items that MUST NOT GET WET.
Our first Insatiable was a wet boat, with a tendency to go through ocean waves rather than over when sailed on the wind. Even clothing can benefit from being in a "garment bag" if you have a hanging locker. Garbage bags are your friend. Knot them or twist tie them. Not water proof, but damp proof, pretty much.

Don't feel too alone in this; one time a whole area's worth of paper charts got salt watered on that boat, and we had them out, airing, all over the boat, but you gotta keep 'em out of the breeze. Drying all of them took days. At the time, 5 charts, if we bought new, equaled a month's groceries for the two of us. Sorry your reference books were damaged.

Our fish guide, Grant's Guide to Fishes, is printed on polypropylene pages, in color, and salt spray doesn't damage it. You might try Googling on waterproof books, or reference manuals, and see if there are a selection of them to replace your worst damaged paper ones. Me, I'd lay them open and try to dry them, if you do not, open them, the paper may sort of melt and glue itself to itself, and I don't know how to fix that, at all.

Final idea, for essential paper charts: Have someone sew you up a chart size clear plastic envelope for them. Use seam sealer for plastic tents to seal the seams. Keep them in as dry a place as you have. For us, this was under the V berth, make a narrow shelf under it so the top of the bunk is the cover over the shelf, access through the locker lid for access there--you may have to roll it, to get it in. Also, we saw rolled charts stored in pvc pipe and suspended from the overhead. There are ways.

Ann

[Ryban]

A lot of these ideas are really good and clever, but are also not really available to me. There's no oven to put them in, no freezer, and certainly no air conditioning.

I appreciate all the feedback. My concern was about the salt as well, but was hopeful that somehow they'd be ok. Some of the books faired alright, but I think these are total losses:

1. Landfalls of Paradise (Cruising guide to the Pacific)
2. Niger Calder's Mechanical and Electrical Manual
3. Don Casey's Illustrated Sailboat Maintenance Manual

The other 3 are relatively dry, and 1 was spared entirely. I like having the physical copies of some of these books onboard, as my kindle is small, and it's not always as convenient to bring the laptop out, nor is it easy to browse the books this way.

That said, big books like these take up a lot of space on a small boat, and weigh a fair amount too. Maybe this is a good excuse to go fully-digital.

I have digital copies of most the books, but not the Don Casey book, and not Landfalls of Paradise -- which is a shame, because that book is almost brand new, and it ain't cheap. If anyone has a digital copy of either of those they'd be willing to share, shoot me a message.

In the future, books are going to be stored in plastic while on passage...

[OS2Dude]

They are toast. We had a storage unit leak on to our possessions, including some old, rare books. We called the Smithsonian about how to deal with them, and they said unless they were of great historical value, the books should be disposed of. (If they were, they would still need to be in a sealed box to prevent mold & mildew.) They will mildew no matter what you do.