How strong would the winds have to be to pick up my 10ft aluminum boat? Should I turn it right side up or leave it upside down?

Not too sure, but we had strong winds due to a thunderstorm that flipped our canoe over when it was sitting upside down.

To be safe, fill it with water.

@Cruiser Really? I never would have though of that. It certainly would make it a lot heavier.

The lowest wind speed in a hurricane is 75 mph. That wind, while it may not “carry” the boat very far (not like an airplane, anyway), can certainly throw a boat such as that, no matter which way it’s oriented. If you can’t get it inside a garage or otherwise out of the wind, then you should really find a way to strap or tie it down.

I’d be afraid that filling it with water (on land), per @Cruiser‘s advice, could stress the hull rivets and/or structure and destroy it.

Another perfectly good option is to put it in water and either anchor it very securely so that it can ride out the storm, or even sink it. If you anchor it with even a light anchor in four or five feet of water (water that won’t be flowing!) and then sink it in place it will be easy to recover later, and it won’t go far. (Waves may carry it a bit along shore, depending on the body of water. I wouldn’t recommend this in a body of water bigger than a large pond.) Alternatively, can you sink it in a neighbor’s swimming pool?

Small boats at anchor will do fine, provided the ground tackle (anchor and rode) are sufficient, and there’s enough room for the boat to move among other boats in the anchorage, and none of them drag their anchors so that one boat fouls another.

@CWOTUS I get get it to water at this point. Too late. I really didn’t even think of it as problem until now. It’s been sitting there so long a really don’t even notice it anymore. I may anchor it anyway, though. I have several boat anchors around here that are pretty heavy. Would that work or would there be bad, unintended consequences with that idea too?

If you leave the boat on land – which is a decent option if you do it correctly – then here’s what I’d suggest:

1. Try to move it against a windbreak such as a line of fir trees, thick bushes or even the wall of a house (inside a corner of a stockade fence would be ideal, for example).

2. Tie it in at least two places. When you anchor a boat in the water you generally want it anchored at only one spot (the bow) so that it will circle around and always face head-to-wind. You don’t have that option on land. So you don’t want the thing being able to “circle” on land. Tie it down in two places.

3. If you store it upside down (as shown in the link) then get it as low to ground as possible so that wind won’t get under it and flip it… and move it. Since it probably has to be angled one way or the other, have the “high” side at your windbreak, and the low side in or on the ground.

Best of all would still be to see if you can garage it somewhere. A car in the driveway will do just fine (as long as tree limbs and other things don’t fall on it and damage it), so if you can convince someone that you and they are all safer with your boat in their garage and their car in their driveway, then that would be a good sales job. (And very likely true.)

Get a bike lock and cable and wrap it thru the cross stays and connect it to a tree.
Rightside up.