Deluge

2 inches of rain Saturday. I didn't get any boat work done.

I did get a call Friday night from one of my boat neighbors because the front of my tarp was coming loose. He and another friend secured the front with random bits of string and advised me to fix it ASAP. That sure made me feel good all Friday night and Saturday morning as I listened to the winds howl...

In the past, I have rolled up a piece of strapping in the front edge of the tarp and clamped it all with spring clamps. This has always worked well and makes it really quick to open up. It is not going to work this year though. The problem is that the front of the structure is much wider than in years past and there is a lot more frontage for the Northeast winds to push against.

In a torrential downpour I secured the front of the tarp by wrapping the ends around the front pole and securing them to the bows. I alternated among the first three bows so as not to load up any one too much.



Last year I pulled the ends of the ground frame in towards the bow and you can see that last year's cover was a lot narrower and more pointed. You can also kind of see the clamping system I had.



So, I guess that means I won't be going in and out of the structure from the front as much. Luckily the back opens up nicely.



Today, after the heavy rains quit, I was able to draw some antifreeze into the raw water system using my nifty 'T' valve and spare hose. It took less than a minute. I put the end of the hose in the bottle. I threw the valve. I cranked the engine. The engine ran for about five seconds. The bottle was empty. I had antifreeze coming out the exhaust at the counter. Simple. I don't think I am going to worry about an oil change or adding Marvel Mystery Oil this year. The engine only ran for an hour and it still has a lot of MMO from last year's winterizing.



You can see in the picture all of the shavings from the bamboo plywood sole that is going in. I didn't have a chance to finish that up today. Its becoming a high priority item now though.

I also cleaned up and brought home all the extra lumber. I probably have enough to make a little workbench under the bow...

TarpsOnline.com aka Tarps Direct

I have used Tarps Online aka Tarps Direct several times in the past six years and have always been quite pleased with their heavy duty silver tarps. I am pretty rough on the tarps and I get 2-3 years service out of each one. I know others that have been using their tarpsonline.com products for over 5 years and still going strong. So, needing a new tarp, I fully expected the new tarp to continue to impress me with its quality and longevity.

I ordered another 'heavy duty' silver tarp. Only time will tell but its not looking good.

This is a typical grommet. I mean typical in that they all look this bad. I didn't have to shop around for a provocative photo.



and another view



Sometimes the tarp makers had problems getting the grommets on the tarp.



The tarp is advertised as 'heavy duty' with grommets spaced 18 inches apart. Does this look like 18 inch spacing?



Can't read the numbers? How about now?



The spacing is highly irregular so tying two ends together is impossible since the grommets at each end don't line up at all.

I didn't have to wait long for my first tear. It came out of the package with a few holes already in the material.



Where the seams are glued together I can see lots of daylight. The seams look weak overall too.



Definitely no local craftsmanship here. I hope they made a good profit using overseas sweat shops, paying their slave wage earners a dollar a day. I hope they made a good profit because it is the very LAST profit they will ever see from me.



TarpsOnline.com / Tarps Direct is dead to me. You have been warned.

If I didn't have a schedule to keep I would have sent this piece of junk back. With winter weather fast approaching I don't have time to sort this out. I will happily spend twice as much for a REAL quality tarp the next time.

Okay, I feel slightly better now ;-)

Wrapping it up

The structure was up last weekend and this weekend was all about closing in the ends.

There was some concern from the yard staff about clearance from the road and conflicts with the snow plowing operations so I moved back the front frame about two feet. That leaves slightly less room up front but still plenty to work with and it makes the front more pointy which is probably a good thing since the boat faces in the direction of the highest winds (Northeast).

I ran a section of last year's strapping straight down from the front of the ridgepole and added a few pieces to hold it in position and give the tarp something to press against (and reduce some of the flailing).



Unlike last year I left the stern pretty flat. There are boats behind me to block the winds so I think I will be okay. The extra room under the boat is nice. I added some crossmembers at the stern to support the tarp too. They are only anchored by single screws at the ends which keeps the whole structure flexible. I don't want to create hardpoints anywhere.



Then I re-used a small tarp from a boat cover a few years ago and covered the stern end.



And then, with some help from a fellow boatyard neighbor, I pulled my brand new 40' x 30' heavy duty silver tarp and anchored it to the bottom framework. I will have more to say about that tarp in another posting.





I will left the tarp settle for a week and then tighten things up. I need to work on sorting out how I will get in and out too. Minor details.

And that is that. The boat is covered. This is boatcover version IV so we will see how this one works out. There is plenty of room inside. Full headroom at the foredeck and headroom and a half over the cockpit. The sides are tight but that is a restriction from the boatyard rules so I didn't have a choice there. A straight sided structure is the only way to improve that.





I have lots of dry storage room under the boat as well. Maybe I will even build in a workbench...





Now its time to get back to real boatwork. Winterize, finish that cabin sole installation, and then everything else.

The truth.

Okay, I stole this from another blog that I read, sadly, there is a lot of truth to it.

Framing up

I almost titled this posting 'Erection Day' but that somehow seemed innappropriate.

I erected the boat cover this weekend. The ends need to be finished off and the tarp pulled over but that can wait for a less windy weekend.

Saturday I connected all the frames together. Then the wind piped up so I decided to put my energies somewhere other than struggle with 16 foot bows in the howling winds.



Sunday was not much better but the urgency to get this job done meant that the wind wasn't quite as bad as the day before.

Not too much to say. I tied a strap on the bow and from the deck pulled it upright. Then I slipped it over the ground frame which in most cases was stiff enough to walk away from for a minute. I had scrap sections of strapping that I used to temporarily hold the bows into position. I just went down the line erecting the bows.







The ridgepole is in three sections. I dropped the middle one in first and secured it to the bows and then attached the two ends. I had some metal fittings from an earlier experiment so I decided to use them to anchor the ridgepole to the bows.



There is plenty of headroom in the middle on deck. I can't walk around but that isn't going to happen without vertical walls which are too pricey to consider right now. Its definitely an improvement over previous years.





I have some room at the ends of the boat. I didn't taper the ends of the cover much this time so I would have more storage room at the ends. Not much in the middle but again, I had to limit myself to 12 feet of width and this is about as good as it gets at a boayard.



With the bows up I had to re-adjust the whole structure a bit to center it over the boat. It really doesn't weigh much and it was easy to horse around into position. I added a couple of extra lengths of strapping diagonally along the inside to stiffen up the structure. I have a few more lengths which I might use next week but I am holding off for now to see how the ends are going to tie off. The ends need to be somewhat pointy to take the winds. Not so much from the stern but the bow points directly northeast which is rather open so a pointy end on the bow will really help.

Amidships the bows are a bit tight. There was more springback than I had anticipated. I will either have to stretch them apart a bit (next week) and/or add some chafe protection at the rubrails. The bows rest only lightly on the rubrails but I expect the structure to move around all winter and chafe will definitely occur if I don't do anything about it.

That was it for this week. I am looking forward to finishing up the cover next weekend and perhaps taking a short break from boatwork. Then again, I am anxious to finish the cabin sole installation and get to work on the interior so we will see...

Not quite there...

Saturday rained buckets so no boat work for me. (I want a shop!) I find it slightly ironic that I need to protect the boat from the weather but I can't because of the weather...

Sunday found my morning taken up with helping a friend load (one of) his antique tractor(s). I want a tractor.

Then I found that I needed more galvanized hardware to bolt the structure together (so that it can be taken apart someday without destruction). Hopefully, I will have better luck with the galvanized hardware this time. Last year, after six months of being outside, I found the galvanized hardware corroded to the point where it would not screw apart and had to be destroyed to take the cover down and transported home. Crossing my fingers but I don't have much faith. New hardware = $50. I also picked up 3 2x4's to form a new ridge pole. Last year I made a ridge pole from strapping with spacer blocks in between just like the bows. That didn't work too well. The ridge was too flexy and there wasn't enough meat to anchor to the bows effectively. This year I will have 2x4's which should be stout enough to hoist my engine out should I find the desire.

Anyway, a late start to real work.

First off I laid out the ground frame that I used last year. It all bolted together just like it was before. I had to make some adjustments because the boat is blocked lower this year. Or rather, it hasn't settled like it had over the two year haulout.



The frame gives the bows something to attach to on the bottom and the crossmembers keep the whole shebang from flying away. The cover wants to fly like an airplane wing when the wind starts blowing and the crossbars mean either the boat has to fly or the crossmembers have to break before the structure flies away (It can happen, I have seen pictures). It took some time to get the frame square and positioned correctly. I am working near my maximum permitted dimensions at the boatyard and I am trying not to go over the line and ruin my welcome. Boat projects are always distrusted in boatyards. Too many of them get abandoned leaving the yard crew to dispose of the mess.

Last week I had laid out and cut two bow ends to fit together.



The top spacer 2x3 was left long so that there would be enough to remove later.

Then I glued and screwed a gusset onto one frame and drilled holes for bolts on the other frame. I need to be able to take the bow halves apart so I can truck them home over the cab of my pickup.



With a pair of bows ready to go I did a test fit.



This one fits well. It looks like the bows are a little too straight so I don't think the bows will naturally straddle the boat at its widest point. I am going to have to tweek the bows a bit in the middle. Oh well.

Then I realized that I had to spend some time with the ridgepole before I could nail down the bow spacing. The 12 foot 2x4's are linked with a short piece bolted on the side. I knew I was going to roughly space the bows 3 feet apart but I needed to fudge it a bit to clear the double wide ridgepole at the joints.

Sadly, I wasn't able to erect the structure. I could have put up maybe half the bows but decided it would be more stable and productive to wait until I could do them all in one day. Each bow becomes half of a matched set and I didn't want to have half of them built and then forget which goes where. Better to do it all at once. It always takes longer than I expect to clean up and get all my tools and materials put away back home anyway.

Next week should be no problem. Unless the weather continues to challenge me...