One time I spent a lazy afternoon counting both how many and how much footage of zippers we have on Dream Catcher. I came up with 62 zippers and 500 feet. Wow, that’s a lot of freaking zippers.

In this harsh environment, the zippers lead a hard life and left to their own devices, they will invariably freeze up and then break in the ensuing process to free them up.

To prevent zipper failure, we take a bar of soap and rub it on the zipper teeth, both inside and out and both zippered and un-zippered. It takes about two minutes to do a single 5 footer, but once done, the zipper is good to go for at least 6 months.

Even using the top of the line, all plastic, YKK #10 zippers you are not safe from corrosion. Do yourself a favor and lubricate those zippers.

Trust me, you’ll thank me down the road.