Boat Cover

[Tom Hoffman]

When you build a boat, one of the major problems as I see it, is that you don't neccessarily have all the requisite skills to really get it done and to a large extent, you have to learn as you go and make mistakes as you go to.

When I built my Whitehall,  I failed to make provision for a drain plus in the stern of the Wine Glass transom.

Now that my wife and I have decided to go up to the Lake Pepin Messabout next weekend.  I have realized that my nice Whitehall will be nothing more than a LARGE MOBIL BATH TUB on wheels waiting to be filled by the first rain storm we may encounter.

With that in mind, we decided to try and make our own cover.  7-8 years ago, my wife approached me with the request for a FANCY embroydery sewing machine with all the bells and whistles.  Thank goodness that I was smart enough to say sure Honey, what kind do you want and promptly took her shopping.  $5000 later and she was the proud owner of  Jenome wonder-do-it-all machine that since that time has made exactly two (2) ring bearers pillows.

I have occasionally brought up the fact that this machine would make a fine boat anchor, and have been ignored completely.  I have asked if it can sew on a button, to date no buttons have been sewn on.

The Good News:

Friday we went out and bought a nice cheap Tarp and Saturday, we laid it all out and yesterday and today she is fitting it as I type.  Which when done will have a Cover for this next weekend and will have added to our realtionship immensly.

In our future now I can see a great cover made from Sunbrella and SAILS, SAILS, SAILS.....

I have forgotten to tell you that she has never told me "NO" when ever I have wanted to do anything and when approached with the idea of going "Live Aboard" and Cruising, she is rolling her eyes and knowing full well that with in a year or two we will be Cruising.

I will post pics of the Cover as soon as it is done.

Cheers,

Tom... ;D ;D

[Frank Hagan]

A good machine will do fine with canvas and Sunbrella, but my wife's small sewing machine really struggled with it.  We were able to make some hatch covers and the like out of Sunbrella, but we could see doing a complete cover would have been really daunting.

Post pics when you get them; I've been using car covers the last few years.  They last a bit longer than polytarp, and don't "rub off" color onto the boat.  But they aren't really durable; I end up replacing them every other year.