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Hi. I'm Nicole from Bennington Marine, and I'm here with some tips to keep your simtex vinyl looking great. The best way to keep your vinyl looking really good year after year is to stick to a very simple maintenance plan. In the spring, you get it out of storage, you wipe it all down, get it all nice and clean.
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Do it again. Do that again. That deep clean in mid-season after you've been using your boat for a few a few months. Then again, as you put it away in the fall, you don't want to put it away with any stains or dirt on the upholstery. It'll really sink in over the winter. So it's a very good idea to put your boat away as clean as possible.
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Now, that simple maintenance plan includes water, which you have an abundance of. And it's a very gentle soap I like to use, Dawn. We go ahead and make a soap and water mixture. Get a nice wet cloth and just begin to use a circular motion. That texture in the simtex is great and we love it. So we want to keep it keep it there by just using a gentle circular motion.
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It doesn't take a lot of pressure. Make sure that you get all of the areas, all the spots that may be holding dirt. Again, that circular motion here. Another good spot to remember to get is those seat fronts. And then another good thing to remember is open up the compartments. Make sure that you're getting this edge right here.
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So after we've gone through and worked in the soap and water, we want to then I'm going to use a water bottle. But you could also use your hose you want to use a lot of water here because you want to get all of that soap off and just work your way through. So you're going to do this on the entire boat every cushion in the boat.
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And that is the deep clean that you want to make sure you get all year long, or three times a year.
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Another important thing is to make sure that you let your your vinyl dry completely before you put it away in the fall. So if you're about to cover it and put it into an enclosed space, maybe let it air out on a nice sunny day, maybe a little bit of wind and and sun would help dry it out. In the summer
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there are a lot more opportunities for spots and stains to crack to creep in. So I'm going to give you some suggestions on how to take care of those. First of all, little feet like to walk on the seats much more than they like to walk on the floor. So we tend to get mud or sand or dirt on the seats from time to time.
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With those little feet usually come snacks so we can get anything from chocolate ground into into the seats and it usually is nice and warm. So the sun plays a little bit of a factor in there, to Blueberries, they like to roll around and get all over the seats too. We had such good intentions. Things like ketchup could get on the seats suntan lotion.
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It's always on the boat.
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Maybe some beverages that we've taken out. Mine would be wine and sometimes even something like motor oil. Who knows?
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All right. So we have quite a few cringeworthy stains here or potential stains, but it doesn't have to be a stain. The key thing, the biggest thing you want to do is to get the stain get the excess liquid up as soon as possible.
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So we're going to get that extra stuff up. And as we go through this process, I want to use things, items that you may have already have on your boat. So you grab it clean towel or a water bottle or lake water because you're out on the water. It's easy to find and you use a generous amount. So again, we're going in that circular motion. That's taking care of those footprints. So I have a couple of stains, a couple of spots that are a little bit more a little bit stubborn here.
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So I'm going to use a soft brush and it's not a big brush. I want to continue to go in a circular motion and I want to do it lightly. We don't want to mess up the texture on that upholstery. So I'm just doing a nice, gentle circle here. So here are the chocolate. So we do have a lingering wine stain here.
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If you have stains that are just not letting go with the water or the brush, a good thing to use is something that's right in your first aid kit, an alcohol swab, very easy you've got it on hand because you've got your first aid kit in the on the boat now, one thing we want to remember, just like in our in our annual cleanings, we want to make sure that we get all of the soap off the vinyl before we let it dry.
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We also want to be very conscious to get all of the alcohol off the vinyl before we let that dry, too. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to pour some more water to it.
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And again, just wipe it in and it's all gone. For more tips, visit us at BenningtonMarine.com.