Category Archives: Sewing

Winter Boat Cover Project

I had a full boat cover made around 10 years ago.  I normally put it on in November and take it off in April, so it gets used 5 or 6 months a year.  The cover was made of heavy duty Sunbrella canvas, and was built in 4 sections that zipper together and keep Apropos almost completely dry from stem to stern during Seattle’s rainy season.  With cutouts for 2 masts and 11 stays, I was amazed at how well it was built by The Canvas Company located in Seattle. 

About 5 years ago, to make room for a bimini, I raised the mizzen boom 13″.  Since the aft section of the cover went over the mizzen boom, that section no longer fit.  For the past couple of years I didn’t use the aft section and just relied on the bimini with full enclosure of the cockpit to keep the aft 1/4th of the boat “dry”.  But a lot of the brightwork was outboard of the cockpit enclosure, so I decided to have the aft section of the cover modified so that it could be used.

After getting a quote for over $2000 to modify the cover, I did what any good sailor with a Sailrite machine would do–make it a DIY project!

Here is a picture showing how the cover was used without the aft section:

Next is a picture showing how it looked trying to hang it over the mizzen boom that had been raised 13″ (it hung way too high, didn’t reach the forward section, and didn’t cover the wind vane):

Next we tried hanging it below the boom but over the bimini (although it reached the forward section, it still fit too high and the openings for the stays were way off):

It would have taken a lot of work to modify the cover to fit in the position shown above.  After some more thinking, we decided to remove the bimini canvas and the forward section of the bimini frame.  This allowed the cover to sit perfectly to mate up with the forward section and all the stays.  In order to cover the windvane, I added a panel to the aft end.  I used 2 fiberglass tent poles to help support the cover (they can be seen in the picture taken of the inside).  Here are some final pictures of the fit after all the modifications were done:

In order to get the above fit, we made the following modifications:

  • removed the seam on the aft end and added a 14″ section to allow it to completely cover the wind vane (this required moving  one side of the zipper and the outside flap that covers the zipper)
  • sewed in white vinyl protective material wherever the inside of the cover touched the bimini frame, the 2 tent poles, and dodger side rails, and the solar panel atop the dodger
  • removed the boom cover section (the boom extension cover used originally when the cover sat over the mizzen boom) and replaced with a vinyl window to allow light in and also to see out

Overall, I’m happy with the fit of the boat cover now.  The downside is I will have to remove the bimini canvas and part of the bimini frame whenever I put the cover on, but this only takes 10 minutes.  The only cost of the project was about $50 for Sunbrella canvas and $30 for vinyl material called Shelter-Rite…. (vs $2000 for a complete retrofit of the aft cover section to make it fit over the boom). Total time spent ripping out seams, sewing, and trial fitting was around 30 hours.

This is why I cover the boat during most of Seattle’s winter:

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Other Sewing Projects

Before continuing on the Weather cloths, a batten had ripped a hole in the batten pocket and broken in two.

 

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I copied the shape of the sail pocket onto some new dacron that we got from Seattle Fabrics, new elastic for the bow end of the batten.  It was difficult getting the large main sail into the small arm of the sewing machine but we managed it. Also, the sailcloth is much more slippery and harder to sew than canvas. I finally managed to sew on the pocket. I did manually it using the monster wheel as it was easier to control than with electricity and i had to work on the deck of the boat as the sail was so large and difficult to maneuver.

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Jim purchased a new batten and shaped it and we inserted it into the pocket and manually sewed the end of the pocket up with my palm and needle.

I had some spare green canvas which I then made up into a ditty bag to put all my sewing stuff into. I found the pattern in the book “Canvas for Cruisers” by Julie Gifford http://www.boatcanvasbook.com/index.html . It is a really great resource book for sewing your own canvas. Between this book and the youtube videos put out by Sailrite.com it’s really easy to learn to sew canvas.

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Even Jim got into the act of sewing. Here he is learning to use the Beast and sewing a cover for the forward hatch. The biggest problem I have now is he likes to hog the Beast when he has a project to do as well.
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Flags

Another one of Karen’s side projects is making flags. My only job was to hammer on the grommets.

I used flagcloth polyester material, flagtape on the sides and fabric pens for the designs.

Here are some we hope to use on our trip (click on flag to identify):

Mexico

French Polynesia

Tahiti

Hans Christian Owners Association

Q flag

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I have to say that I had the most fun designing the French Polynesia Flag, which I found out is not a courtesy flag in French Polynesia. The official courtesy flag is the French Tricolour. To get the design on the white portion of the flag I printed out a copy of the design and traced and coloured in the design using fabric pens directly.

For the Mexican Flag, which was my first attempt, I traced two designs onto white fabric patches and sewed them onto the flag. This design was so intricate I was afraid of making a permanent mistake if I traced it directly onto the fabric.

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The Beast

I’m very excited. After some basic sewing lessons and practicing with a home sewing machine we bit the bullet and bought “The Beast”. It’s a Sailrite Ultrafeed LSZ, a portable semi-industrial sewing machine. We got it from sailrite.com and I’ve been combing through all their instructional videos which have been very helpful.

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Jim is creating a to-do list for me of boat sewing projects which is daunting since my sewing experience has been limited to 2 tote bags, a zipper bag, a pillow, 4 place mats and 2 bows! This includes weather cloths, dinghy cover, cover for our new BBQ grill, rope bags etc etc.

I decided to start with weather cloths because how hard can it be to sew a few rectangular cloths up. Wrong!!!
We wanted to be able to take them off easily made the design of them more complicated than sewing a rectangle of Sunbrella, lining it with grommet holes and lacing it to the boat.
Firstly, I used my primary research tool, Google. There i found lots of photos and some canvas blogs on boat sewing that we’re useful. I also watched all the how to videos produced by Sailrite the makers of The Beast. Good videos on techniques is sewing canvas and other tools needed for all kinds of projects.
Then I went and bought a large amount of Sunbrella in Hemlock tweed.

I used some blue wrapping material that I recycled from the OR for making a pattern. They’re flexible like cloth but can cut like paper. I made patterns for the aft end of the boat for each side.

As the weather cloths got more tricky because of the winches and life sling attachment and Jim decided to get a bimini fitted, I took a break and started the grill cover for our new Magma party sized grill.

It consists if a circle whose diameter I measured along the top of the grill to its widest part. Then I cut a rectangle of cloth to make a cylinder along the edge if the circle whose length was the perimeter of the widest part of the grill and its width is how much I wanted to cover the underside. I also made a seam allowance of 1″ at the joining seams plus 2″ for the edge seam at the bottom. I stitched the circle to the long side of the rectangle to make a cylinder.

I double stitched the seams.

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Then sewed an edge on the ends and reinforced it with polyester.

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I inserted some size 2 spur grommets at the two edges for a tie to be inserted from the front of the cover then encased a tie into the seam along the bottom edge of the cover.

Spur grommets

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And Voila! A new Grill cover!

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