Asian Carp and Cockpit Carpet Don't Mix

 I had mentioned in an earlier post how we had new carpet made for the stairs on Swing Set. Hopefully we all live and learn and we learned that carpet on a boat on the outdoor surfaces is a pain in the butt, at least for a couple of reasons. The first thing is that wet carpet stinks, and once it gets wet, it takes forever to dry out. If we were out on the hook, or cruising, whenever it started to sprinkle, we had to take up the carpet on the steps and the rather large carpet in the cockpit. One of the engine access hatches was also under that cockpit carpet, and the need to roll aside that carpet tended to give me reason to avoid periodic engine room checks. In addition to our desire to keep the carpets dry, we also live in Asian Carp country. Asian Carp will, and did, jump into our cockpit while we were under way several times. Have you ever thrown water balloons?
An Asian Carp explodes like a bulging water balloon whenever it hits the deck of your boat. Blood and guts go everywhere. So fish guts, boat drinks, and just the airborne dust, tree pollen, and plain old dirt get into the carpet and is nearly impossible to get out unless you want to do a carpet cleaning every week.
Then there was the issue with where to put it once we took it up to keep it dry. Both of our heads had carpet in them also, and it seems like they were never drying completely and mildew was an issue.
 There are options to carpet of course. Teak is the traditional option, but was cost prohibitive in our minds. There are several faux teak manufacturers and one that caught our eye was SeaDek.

 These are templates I made and mailed to SeaDek. The lines on the templates show the direction that I wanted the pattern to follow. Made on regular plastic sheeting and cut to size they were easy to mail. The pieces are shipped to you and it's a simple peel and stick operation.
We contemplated putting SeaDek on the cockpit floor as well, but it occurred to me that even though the material is easy to scrub, and it dries very fast, it is not a surface that lends itself to mopping very well, so our cockpit floor was left in alone.

Here is the before and after look of our day head with SeaDek installed. It drys quickly after a shower and mildew is no longer an issue.

Here is the port stairs to the bridge with SeaDek installed. Any similar product like this will give a boat a whole new look. The main thing is that when it starts to rain, we do nothing in regard to carpet on the boat, and the anxiety factor is greatly reduced when a big fat Asian Carp decides to commit Hari Kari on our boat deck. This is in keeping with our motto of "less is more", or as Forrest Gump said, "one less thing", meaning more time for the important stuff.