Salty Captain Ultimate Wash and Flush Package review

Fighting salt is a constant battle each time you hit the water, so a solution that makes the process of removing it any easier is welcome.

Salty Captain is a Queensland-based company that, among many other water-based lifestyle products, also makes wash-down accessories that help to prolong the life of boats.

Its newest product is the Captain’s Musket, a four-part hose fitting that allows users to accurately mix up to 90mL of salt wash or engine flush formulas with water. It’s designed to spray the salt wash on a boat, or plug into a set of earmuffs to wash out an engine.

Salty Captain has packaged its washdown products into kits so that owners have instant access to the products they need. At the pinnacle of these kits is the Salty Captain Ultimate Wash and Flush Kit.

We received one of the kits in the mail via retailer Anaconda, so decided to give it a try-out.

The Salty Captain Ultimate Wash and Flush Kit includes the Captain’s Musket (worth $70), a litre of wash-down formula ($35), a litre of engine flush formula ($35), 750mL of Captain’s Seal lanolin-based spray ($50) that helps to stop corrosion, a microfibre hand mitt for washing down ($24.99 from Anaconda), and a microfibre towel for mopping up ($34.99 from Anaconda).

Buy each of the items individually and you’ll be digging into your pocket to the tune of around $250, so at $190 for the complete kit, it’s a decent saving over building your own Salty Captain kit.

Our kit has also come with a Ship Shine plastic and rubber restoration kit, worth $100, that contains 80mL of alcohol-based surface preparation and 30mL of restoration fluid, as well as suede-like wipes and a sponge. The restoration fluid is sodium hydroxide, a strong base, so wear gloves and eye protection when using it.

We’ll look at that separately.

The Captain’s Musket comes disassembled, and unless you realise the assembly instructions are online you’ll have to work out where the pair of included O-rings go – one is for where the dispenser screws on, and the other is for where the hose attachment screws in.

Is the kit decent value for money? That’s debatable as you can assemble your own off-the-shelf washdown kit for much cheaper than this, and Salty Captain's prices improve markedly the more quantity of liquid you buy (20 litres of the washdown detergent, for instance, is only $350). But Salty Captain is a one-stop, fuss-free solution, and in the boating world, a dollar of prevention is worth thousands of dollars of cure. 

You're better off finding a retail store that sells replacement Salty Captain products, though, as ordering them online adds significant postage costs.

The good thing about the Salty Captain kits is the convenience; everything you need to remove salt from your boat, jet ski and even the fishing rods is right there in the one box.

Washing down the boat is easy. Clip the Captain’s Musket to the hose, put the red washdown detergent (around 20mL for a tinnie and 40mL for a larger boat) in the dispenser, turn on the tap and hose down the boat, walking around it twice. The detergent foams up to show where it has been applied.

Leave everything for a minute while you wander around the boat with the mitt and wash off the bits of bait, blood and seaweed, go back to the Captain’s Musket, set it on the rinse setting, and then wash the boat clean.

The last step is to wipe off the water using the microfibre towel. If you don't do this you can get streaks running down your boat, so it's worth the effort.

Job done.

As a test of its efficacy, I used the Salty Captain detergent alone on the top of the outboard engine cowling, the place that I normally need to scrub clean of crusted-on salt that is left over after the heat of the engine evaporates the saltwater. I didn’t need to scrub, so it worked.

Just as easy to use is the engine flush. Unclip the hose fitting from the Captain’s Musket, plug the fitting onto the earmuffs or the engine wash system, turn on the tap, turn on the engine, and then push the musket’s lever right forward to allow the engine flush to mix with the flow of water. Keep going until the blue engine wash fluid is all gone. 

If you’re washing down a jet ski, it pays to check what each manufacturer recommends for flushing out the engine. There are subtle differences between each of the three major brands – Kawasaki, Sea-Doo and Yamaha – so ensure you’re up-to-date with the process.

The Captain’s Seal is a lanolin-based spray that you squirt liberally onto the engine to prevent rust and repel water. It’s easy to apply, smells like a wet sheep, and forms a protective barrier that lasts until the next time you hit the water.

No one likes having to wash down a boat or a jet ski at the end of the day. It’s a long, tedious process that’s often left to the skipper alone to endure long after everyone else who has been on board has left.

What Salty Captain does is provide convenience, so that rather than scouting around for all the bits you’ll need to keep a boat salt-free you can just duck into your nearest Anaconda store and get it all in the one convenient package.

The kit also makes it easy to replace the cleaning and engine flush liquids as they’re used; if the red stuff is running low, grab a new bottle of red stuff. Same with the blue.

The Captain’s Musket is great as it removes the need to wash down the boat by hand using a bucket, and dramatically speeds up the entire process.

If you’re like me and consider the wash-down process a big drag, being able to do it with a cold drink in one hand is worth it.

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