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Exterior Canvas |
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Exterior Canvas |
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Our first set of canvas lasted 6 years. After a circumnavigation and the abuse of the soot and acid rain of Trinidad and Singapore, the ravages of the Red Sea dust and some bad advice on re-waterproofing, the dodger and bimini were pretty much shot. In those 6 years I replaced the clear vinyl windows once and the zippers once.
Making a dodger and bimini from scratch is a pretty complicated job, requiring the designing and bending of stainless tubing and the careful fitting of the canvas and windows – a fairly advanced undertaking that I was not ready to do myself. However, once the stainless is in place, there is no reason why you can't re-do your own once the time comes if you have the machine and maybe a little help from your friends. Actually, if you can get a job in a sail loft for a few months, this is the best kind of training you can possibly get! Hard work, and don't expect high pay, but you will certainly learn a lot. As far as the frame for the dodger, use stainless, not aluminum. It is too weak. Use strong tubing and good strong attachment points to the boat - you or your mate will surely fall hard against it sometime and grab it to keep from falling. Now, in terms of the design of the canvaswork, there are some lessons we learned with our first set-up which we fixed the second time around:
The ultimate dodger we think (as do most cruisers) is the hard dodger. Unfortunately, most of them are terrible heavy looking square boxes that make the boat look horrible. But we have seen some very slick and sexy hard dodgers that take on the lines of the boat, looking like they belong in the design and are not just stuck on there. We wish we had one. It would be important for the hard dodger to have at least one window (usually the center one) opening, so that you don’t die of heat and lack of air while sitting in the cockpit. We have seen one with an overhead opening hatch for this purpose. The dodger and bimini are essential pieces of canvaswork that protect your body from the elements – heat, sun, cold, wind and rain, and even mosquitoes – and so you need to plan ahead to make a practical and good-looking job of it. Awnings – in the tropics you will die unless you find a way to shield yourself from the sun. Study other people’s creations and adapt for your own boat. There are many considerations. First, sometime or another, you will need to take that awning down in a hurry in a sudden squall in the middle of the night. They create a fair bit of windage so you need to consider how to ‘reef’ it if the wind gets up or it might cause your boat to drag. To 'reef' ours, we simply untie all the side ties and madly wrap the thing around the boom, securing it with its side tie lines.
We have 2 separate awnings – a
foredeck awning very low to the deck, which stays up in all wind conditions and
cools the V-Berth, and a main awning from the mast back to the solar panels
which has no
If you are thinking of catching rain with your awning, well, you can try. But most of the time when there is rain, there is wind too, and your awning will probably flap just enough to flap the rain right off. But, hey, you can always give it a try!
Sail Covers - The big thing these days seem to be the 'stack pack' or 'lazy bag'. This is a sail cover that stays on the boom all the time. The idea is that you simply open the zipper along the spine, pull up the mainsail and go! then when you are all done, just let the sail down into the stack pack, stuff it all in there and zip it up again. They are very popular in the Caribbean and we
have never used one so we don't really know. But we do know that you don't see
them on many circumnavigators. A very good sailmaker whom I really respect says
he thinks stack packs shorten the life of sails by at least half. This is
because nobody zips the damn things up - they just let the sail lay there inside
the stack pack with the sail partially exposed to the sun all the time. The
zippers are too hard to get at and do up I guess. Also, I think if you were is a really bad storm, the stackpack would be a problem, and how would it work with your storm trysail if you have one. I don't know enough to say. The other really big thing these days is the furling main - either in boom or in mast. In-mast means you can't have battens, and in-boom used to be problematic getting them furled but I think these problems have been solved. Again, I don't know enough but most people who have these systems seem to love them. I guess the thing is this. Depending on where you are planning to sail - civilized, developed places or remote islands with basic services only - and how much money you have, you can choose high-tech, or low tech. We have an old fashioned mainsail with full battens that we hoist up from the mast with no electric winches. We cover it with an old fashioned sail cover after we're done sailing. If something goes wrong with it we are capable of fixing things ourselves. Cockpit Cushions – It took 3 tries, but we finally have the cockpit area comfortable now. We tried closed-cell foam like the books recommended, but found on any kind of passage we were just about crying because our butts were so sore from sitting on them day after day. Also, our choice of fabric was wrong - we covered the originals with Sunbrella (albeit a light colour - Silver grey), and it got so grubby they could not be cleaned any more. Attempt number 2 used supposedly a new generation of softer closed-cell foam and Phifertex mesh as a fabric covering. The idea was that this would which would dry easily and be washable. Well, the foam was still much too hard, and the Phifertex was like sitting on a screen door. Our butts were sore AND patterned! On top of this, the foam shrank quite a bit. Attempt # 3 – we took the existing closed cell foam, glued to the topside a layer of ordinary 1" mattress topper foam like you buy for a conventional bed (the flat stuff, not the egg-crate style foam). Then we spent real money on nice marine grade soft vinyl with a knit backing in an almost-white grey so it stays cool in the sun. It's not sticky to sit on. The underside is the old Phifertex so that the closed cell foam can ‘breathe’ and stay dry. It has been the best so far – soft, cool and easy to clean. Some colourful throw pillows,
and it seems just like your living room!
They are pretty expensive to have made because they are so labour intensive, so if you can do it yourself, you can save quite a bit of money. Mosquito screens: At some point, you might need to think about
how to keep mosquitoes out - very important in malaria and dengue fever
countries. We ahve always used no see um netting - the really fine stuff, but it
does cut down on air flow below. We have tried various methods of constructing
the screens. One was to glue velcro around the hatch openings with contact
cement, and make screens to fit, with matching velcro on the screens. This works
OK, but the velcro invariably comes off, gets old and the glue makes a horrible
mess around your hatch openings.
We also tried making screens out of no-seeum
netting and stitching rows of 'lead shot tape' which is used in the drapery
business to weight
Finally we found the plastic velcro strips, which we simply screwed into the hatch openings, using the original velcro'd screens already had made. It's much neater looking and doesn't muck up the hatch openings with glue. For the cockpit, I have made a simply drape,
weighted with lead shot tape, that snaps over the
Ventilation - It seems there is never
enough flow-through ventilation on boats. Everyone seems to have
some form of windscoop. Some are large, elaborate and highly
engineered designs and others are very simple. Study other
people's scoops and adapt one to your boat.
We have tried various designs, trying to find the perfect windscoop that keeps out rain and is quickly 'dousable' in high winds. We haven't really succeeded yet but we have a pretty simple scoop for the V-Berth that can be put in the 'up' position in instances where there is almost no wind, and in the 'down' position when it's windier. And I made a second scoop that can attach to the underside of the forward awning when we put this awning up. For this one, I put little viewing windows in, so we can pop up the hatch and peer out to the back and sides of the boat to see if there are pirates attacking. Maybe I went too far!
Sunbrella - will get mildew. We take care of that with a bleach and soap and water. The problem occurs when the waterproofing finally comes out of the canvas. You have to re-waterproof it. Use only the stuff recommended by Sunbrella. Vinyl - can be cleaned just with dish soap and water. But don't use any kind of abrasive on it or you will ruin the protective coating. Then it will go all dull and you won't be able to clean it any more. This goes for all vinyl whether it it upholstery or awnings. Don't place vinyl down on a rough surface and walk on it - the same thing will happen. Sails - these are hard to clean but the best you can do is spread them out and use lots of soapy water and rinse well with fresh. For rust stains in Sunbrella or sails, use a product called "Magica" available in chandleries - it is actually just Oxalic acid, so if you have some of this (we always carry it in powder form and mix it up ourselves) just use it. It's not supposed to hurt Sunbrella, but try it on an unconspicuous spot first. Trust no one! Every year, have a look at the stitching on your canvas. Take your fingernail and scratch at the stitching. If it disintegrates, take it in and have it all restitched. Take a sharp little spike like a seam ripper's dull side, and try to break a stitch. If it breaks easily, get it restitched. In the tropics, restitching needs to be done every 2-3 years. Same thing with zippers, especially if exposed to the sun. If the zipper's teeth go all powdery when you scratch at them, its time to replace. There are now new zippers from YKK that are UV resistant and should last longer. Try to get these. And, speaking from experience.....Do your sailmaker a favour - clean your canvas before bringing it in. Don't expect him or her to be happy to work on a filthy old dinghy cover or a salty old sail - would you be? |
After awhile, especially if you are a sewing fool like me, you may find yourself covering everything with canvas:
In my opinion, good protection in the cockpit
from sun, rain and wind are essential. There are some few boats out here with no
canvas but these are very few. We did not
know a lot about canvas before we took off and
this canvas work was one of the last minute things we had done, thinking that we
might need it. We were even thinking of making it ourselves while en route!
We're glad
we didn’t. 
time &
money. They don’t really work well for either purpose. If you want mesh
shade-screens, use something called 'Awntex' which is tighter weave mesh. In
my case, because I have the clear vinyl enclosure, I simply tie a piece of
cotton (to which I sewed shoe laces to the corners) to any convenient points
in the cockpit to keep out the afternoon sun.
For you, it may be worth the
high cost. It is particular, however, about how you clean it - check out the
information on their website - Google Strataglass.
Our first awning
was pretty bad. Nobody told me that a 'roped' awning was impossible to tension
sufficiently to prevent the flapping in the wind. The only way to go is with an
awning
reinforced at all outside edges and along the spine with nylon webbing.
Stainless steel rings attached to the webbing at the four corners and the front
and back of the spine, and reinforced with corner patches will make strong
attachment points. Don't cut the sides straight either. Cut them slightly concave (2% of the length) in a curve, so that when stretched out, the corners
will pull on the awning and you won't get that flapping. A flapping awning not
only is noisy and looks bad, but it doesn't last as long either.
battens and which we can douse in a hurry.
We still had a problem, however, making the
cushions stay in place. Especially the cushions on the side seats. We had to
stow them below when we were sailing because they slipped off underfoot and were
a real hazard. Finally we discovered bolt-rope and track. The bolt rope is like
big piping. You sew it to the bottom edge of the cushion and install a track to
slide the bolt rope into. It makes a very secure attachment.
down
curtains. The screens were just oversize squares of netting, weighted all around
the outside, and with a little reinforced slit to allow for the hatch's opening
bar. The idea was to drape them over the hatches. This worked pretty good too,
but was a bit fiddly to put them up.
top
of the companionway, and we just pull it aside to get in and out, and just drape
it around.
It's
pretty easy and not so fiddly as mosquito hatches. We do have a wooden frame
across which there is mosquito netting - we use this when we lock up the boat to
let in some air yet keep out the bad guys (at least all but the real determined
ones!).